A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR. 


ESSAYS  TOWABDS  A  CKITICAL  METHOD. 
NEW  ESSAYS  TOWARDS  A  CRITICAL  METHOD. 
MONTAIGNE  AND  SHAKSPEBE. 
BUCKLE  AND  HIS  CRITICS :  a  Sociological  Study. 
THE  SAXON  AND  THE  CELT  :  a  Sociological  Study. 
MODEEN    HUMANISTS:    Studies  of   Carlyle,   Mill, 

Emerson,  Arnold,    Buskin,   and   Spencer,   with    an 

Epilogue  on  Social  Beconstruction. 
THE  FALLACY  OF  SAVING:  a  Study  in  Economics. 
THE    EIGHT    HOUBS    QUESTION  :    a    Study    in 

Economics. 
THE     DYNAMICS    OF    BELIGION :     an    Essay    in 

English  Culture-History.     (By  "  M.  W.  Wiseman.") 
A  SHOBT  HISTOBY  OF  FBEETHOUGHT,  Ancient 

and  Modern. 

PATBIOTISM  AND  EMPIBE. 
STUDIES  IN  BELIGIOUS  FALLACY. 
AN  INTBODUCTION  TO  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 
WBECKING  THE  EMPIBE. 
CHBISTIANITY  AND  MYTHOLOGY. 


A  SHORT 


HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


BY 

JOHN  M.  EOBERTSON 


[ISSUED   BY   THE   RATIONALIST   PRESS   ASSOCIATION,    LIMITED] 


WATTS  &  CO., 

17,  JOHNSON'S  COURT,  FLEET  STKEET,  LONDON,  E.G. 
1902 


CORRIGENDA. 

P.  157.  For  §  4  read  §  3. 
P.  165.  For  §  5  mid  §  4. 
P.  299.  For  Chapter  IV.  rearf  Chapter  V. 


CONTENTS. 


PREFACE.  

PART  I.— PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

CHAPTER   I. — THE   BEGINNINGS.  PAGE 

§  1.  Documentary  Clues 1 

§  2.  The  Earliest  Christian  Sects        ....          6 

§  3.  Personality  of  the  Nominal  Founder    ...  12 

§  4.  Myth  of  the  Twelve  Apostles        .        .         .         .  17 

§  5.  Primary  Forms  of  the  Cult 22 

§  6.  Rise  of  Gentile  Christism 32 

§  7.  Growth  of  the  Christ  Myth 43 

CHAPTER   II. — THE    ENVIRONMENT. 

§  1.  Social   and  Mental    Conditions  in    the  Roman 

Empire 49 

§  2.  Jewish  Orthodoxy 56 

§  3.  Jewish  Sects  :  the  Essenes 60 

§  4.  Gentile  Cults 62 

§  5.  Ethics  :  Popular  and  Philosophic        ...  73 

CHAPTER   HI. — CONDITIONS   OF   SURVIVAL. 

§  1.  Popular  Appeal 79 

§  2.  Economic  Causation 81 

§  3.  Organisation  and  Sacred  Books  ....  86 

§  4.  Concession  and  Fixation      .....  91 

§  5.  Cosmic  Philosophy 95 


PART  II.— CHRISTIANITY  FROM   THE  SECOND  CENTURY 
TO  THE  RISE  OF  MOHAMMEDANISM. 

CHAPTER  I. — SCOPE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  THE  UNESTABLISHED 
CHURCH. 

S  1.  Numbers  and  Inner  Life  98 


253046 


vi  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

§  2.  Growth  of  the  Priesthood 105 

§  3.  The  Gnostic  Movement  in  the  Second  Century     .  Ill 

§  4.  Marcionism  and  Montanism        ....  119 

§  5.  Bites  and  Ceremonies 124 

§  6.  Strifes  over  Primary  Dogma        ....  125 

CHAPTER   n. — RELATIONS   OF   CHURCH   AND   STATE. 

§  1.  Persecutions 130 

§  2.  Establishment  and  Creed-Making        .        .        .  140 

§  3.  Keaction  under  Julian          .....  157 

§  4.  Re-establishment :  Disestablishment  of  Paganism  165 

CHAPTER   in. — FAILURE   WITH   SURVIVAL. 

§  1.  The  Overthrow  of  Arianism         ....  176 

§  2.  The  Cost  of  Orthodoxy 181 

§  3.  Moral  and  Intellectual  Stagnation        .         .         .191 

§  4.  The  Social  Failure 198 


PART  III.—  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

CHAPTER   I. — EXPANSION   AND   ORGANISATION. 

§  1.  Position  in  the  Seventh  Century ....  205 

§  2.  Methods  of  Expansion 209 

§  3.  Growth  of  the  Papacy 216 

CHAPTER   II. — RELIGIOUS   EVOLUTION   AND   STRIFE. 

§  1.  Growth  of  Idolatry  and  Polytheism      .         .         .230 
§  2.  Doctrines  of  the  Eucharist,  Purgatory,  and  Con- 
fession       236 

§  3.  Rationalistic  Heresies 243 

§  4.  Anti-clerical  Heresies 247 

CHAPTER  m. — THE   SOCIAL   LIFE   AND   STRUCTURE. 

§  1.  The  Clergy,  Regular  and  Secular          .         .         .  257 
§  2.  The  Higher  Theology  and  its  Effects   .        .        .264 

§  3.  Christianity  and  Feudalism         ....  268 

§  4.  Influence  of  the  Crusades 275 

CHAPTER  IV.— THE   INTELLECTUAL   LIFE. 

§  1.  Superstition  and  Intolerance        ....  281 

§  2.  The  Inquisition 285 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

§  3.  Classic  Survivals  and  Saracen  Contacts       .         .       291 
§  4.  Religion  and  Art 296 

CHAPTER   V. — BYZANTINE   CHRISTIANITY  ....         299 


PART  IV.— MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

CHAPTER   I. — THE   REFORMATION. 

§  1.  Moral  and  Intellectual  Forces      .        .        .         .308 

§  2.  Political  and  Economic  Forces     .         .         .         .313 

§  3.  Social  and  Political  Results          ....       324 

§  4.  Intellectual  Results 333 

CHAPTER  II. — PROGRESS   OF   ANTI-CHRISTIAN    THOUGHT. 

§  1.  The  Physical  Sciences 348 

§  2.  Philosophy,  Cosmic  and  Moral     ....       354 
§  3.  Biblical  and  Historical  Criticism          .         .         .356 

CHAPTER  in. — POPULAR   ACCEPTANCE. 

§  1.  Catholic  Christianity 362 

§  2.  Protestant  Christianity 368 

§  3.  Greek  Christianity 376 

CHAPTER  IV. — THE  RELATION  TO  PROGRESS. 

§  1.  Moral  Influence 385 

§  2.  Intellectual  Influence 390 

§  3.  Conclusion  and  Prognosis    .....       396 


SYNOPSIS   OF   LITERATURE        ......         401 

INDEX 417 


PREFACE. 


AN  attempt  to  write  the  history  of  Christianity  in  the 
space  of  an  average  novel  is  so  obviously  open  to 
objections  that,  instead  of  trying  to  parry  them,  I 
shall  merely  state  what  seems  to  me  the  possible 
compensation  of  brevity  in  such  a  matter.  It  is  or 
may  be  conducive  to  total  comprehension,  to  cohe- 
rence of  judgment,  and  in  a  measure  even  to  the 
understanding  of  details.  A  distinguished  expert  in 
historical  and  philological  research  has  avowed  that 
specialists  sometimes  get  their  most  illuminating 
ideas  from  a  haphazard  glance  into  a  popular  and 
condensed  presentment  of  their  own  subject.  With- 
out hoping  so  to  help  the  experts,  I  humbly  conceive 
that  the  present  conspectus  of  Christian  history  may 
do  an  occasional  service  even  to  an  opponent  by 
bringing  out  a  clear  issue.  Writers  of  a  different 
way  of  thinking  have  done  as  much  for  me. 

The  primary  difficulty  is  of  course  the  problem  of 
origins.  In  my  treatment  of  this  problem,  going  as  I 
do  beyond  the  concessions  of  the  most  advanced  pro- 
fessional scholars,  I  cannot  expect  much  acquiescence 
for  the  present.  It  must  here  suffice  to  say,  first,  that 
the  data  and  the  argument,  insofar  as  they  are  not 


X  PKEFACE. 

fully  set  forth  in  the  following  pages,  have  been  pre- 
sented in  the  larger  work  entitled  Christianity  and 
Mythology,  or  in  the  quarters  mentioned  in  the  Synopsis 
of  Literature  appended  to  this  volume  ;  and,  secondly, 
to  urge  that  opponents  should  read  the  study  on  the 
Gospels  by  Professor  Schmiedel  in  the  new  Encyclo- 
paedia Biblica  before  taking  up  their  defensive  positions. 
But  so  far  am  I  from  supposing  my  own  solutions  to 
be  definitive  that  I  desire  here  to  avow  a  modification 
of  opinion  made  since  the  first  part  of  the  book  was 
printed.  It  is  there  assumed  that  the  received  trans- 
lation of  a  familiar  passage  (Luke  xvii.  21),  "The 
kingdom  of  God  is  within  you,"  is  right.  On  chal- 
lenge and  reflection  I  have  to  admit  that  it  is  not : 
the  proper  translation  is  almost  certainly  "  in  your 
midst";  and  the  passage  thus  falls  in  line  with  the 
other  accounts  in  Luke  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  as  a 
religious  movement  or  communion.  My  line  of  argu- 
ment is  not  here  affected  ;  but  it  may  well  be  that 
some  other  such  necessary  correction  might  some- 
where impair  it. 

One  of  the  drawbacks  of  short  histories  is  that  in 
them  at  times  a  disputable  proposition  has  to  be 
summarily  put.  I  doubt,  however,  whether  this 
occurs  oftener  in  the  following  pages  than  in  lengthy 
treatises,  where  full  discussion  is  fairly  to  be  expected. 
For  instance,  I  have  held  that  the  reference  in 
Rev.  ii.  8  to  "  the  blasphemy  of  them  which  say 
they  are  Jews  and  are  not,  but  are  a  synagogue  of 
Satan,"  is  to  the  Pauline  or  other  Gentilising  Jew- 


PREFACE.  xi 

Christists.  That  is  the  view  of  Renan.  Harnack, 
who  passes  for  a  more  solid  authority,  pronounces 
summarily  that  the  phrase  is  cast  by  Jew-Christists 
at  orthodox  Jews.  Such  a  decision  seems  to  me  to 
be  irrational,  but  it  is  impossible  in  such  a  work  to 
give  space  to  a  refutation,  where  Harnack  has  offered 
no  argument  on  the  other  side  in  a  monumental 
treatise.  The  same  authority  has  justified  masses 
of  conformist  historiography  by  the  simple  dogmatic 
assertion  that  the  time  is  near  at  hand  when  men 
will  universally  recognise,  in  matters  of  Christian 
origins,  "  the  essential  rightness  of  tradition,  with  a 
few  important  exceptions."  In  putting  forth  a  sketch 
which  so  little  conforms  to  that  opinion,  I  would  but 
claim  that  it  is  not  more  unjudicial  in  its  method 
than  more  conservative  performances. 

After  the  period  of  "  origins "  has  been  passed, 
there  is  happily  less  room  for  demur  on  any  grounds. 
The  statements  of  fact  in  the  second  and  third  parts 
are  for  the  most  part  easily  to  be  supported  from  the 
testimony  of  standard  ecclesiastical  historians;  and 
the  general  judgments  sometimes  cited  in  inverted 
commas,  in  all  four  parts,  are  nearly  always  from 
orthodox  writers.  What  is  special  to  the  present 
treatise  is  the  sociological  interpretation.  It  was 
indeed  to  the  end  of  such  interpretation  that  the 
researches  here  summarised  were  begun,  over  sixteen 
years  ago  ;  and  in  a  documented  work  on  The  Rise  of 
Christianity,  Sociologically  Considered,  I  hope  more 
fully  to  present  it.  But  as  my  first  perplexity  was  to 


xii  PREFACE. 

ascertain  the  real  historical  processus,  I  have  never 
subordinated  that  need  to  the  desire  for  explanation. 

It  hardly  needs  actual  experience  of  the  risks  of 
error  and  oversight  in  a  condensed  narrative  to  con- 
vince one  of  the  difficulty  of  escaping  them.  Where 
no  single  authority  is  found  infallible,  I  must  at  times 
have  miscarried,  were  it  only  because  I  have  aimed  at 
something  beyond  a  condensation  of  current  accounts. 
No  criticism,  therefore,  will  be  more  highly  valued  by 
me  than  one  which  corrects  my  errors  of  fact. 

In  order  to  cover  the  ground  within  the  compass 
taken,  it  was  absolutely  necessary  to  digest  the 
subject-matter  under  general  heads ;  and  the  chrono- 
logical movement  may  in  consequence  be  less  clear 
than  in  histories  which  proceed  by  centuries.  As  a 
partial  remedy,  dates  have  been  frequently  inserted  in 
the  narrative,  and  it  is  hoped  that  the  full  index  will 
help  to  meet  the  difficulty  which  may  sometimes  be 
felt  as  to  where  a  given  name  or  episode  should  be 
looked  for. 

It  is  perhaps  needless  to  add  that  the  appended 
Synopsis  of  Literature  does  not  in  the  least  pretend 
to  be  a  bibliography  for  professed  students.  It  is 
designed  merely  as  a  first  help  to  painstaking  readers 
to  search  and  judge  for  themselves  on  the  problems 
under  notice. 

December,  1901. 


PART  L— PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    BEGINNINGS. 

§  1.  Documentary  Clues. 

IN  the  ancient  history  of  religions,  as  in  the  ancient 
history  of  nations,  the  first  account  given  of  origins 
is  almost  always  a  myth.  A  divine  or  worshipped 
founder  is  craved  by  the  primitive  imagination  no  less 
for  cults  and  institutions,  tribes  and  polities,  than  for 
the  forms  of  life  and  the  universe  itself;  and  history, 
like  science,  may  roughly  be  said  to  begin  only  when 
that  craving  for  first  causes  has  been  discredited,  or 
controlled,  by  the  later  arising  instinct  of  exact 
observation.  Such  a  check  or  control  tends  to  be  set 
up  by  the  presence  of  intelligently  hostile  forces,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  religion  of  Mohammed,  whose 
teaching  warred  with  and  was  warred  on  by  rival 
cultures  from  the  first,  and  whose  own  written  and 
definite  doctrine  forbade  his  apotheosis.  Some  of  the 
early  Christian  sects,  which  went  far  towards  setting 
up  independent  cults,  had  their  origins  similarly 
defined  by  the  pressure  of  criticism  from  the  main 
body.  But  before  the  Christian  system  had  taken 
organised  historic  form,  in  virtue  of  having  come  into 
the  heritage  of  literary  and  political  method  embodied 


PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 


in  the  Greco-Roman  civilisation,  it  is  rarely  possible 
to  trust  the  record  of  any  cult's  beginnings,  even 
where  it  professes  to  derive  from  a  non-supernatural 
teacher  ;  so  ungoverned  is  the  myth-making  instinct 
in  the  absence  of  persistent  criticism.  Buddha, 
Zoroaster,  and  Moses  are  only  less  obviously  mythical 
figures  than  Krishna,  Hercules,  and  Osiris.  Of  the 
Christian  cult  it  can  at  best  be  said  that  it  takes  its 
rise  on  the  border-land  between  the  historical  and 
the  unhistorical,  since  any  rational  defence  of  it  to-day 
admits  that  in  the  story  of  its  origins  there  is  at  least 
an  element  of  sheer  myth. 

The  oldest  documents  of  the  cult  are  ostensibly  the 
Epistles  of  Paul ;  and  concerning  these  there  are 
initial  perplexities,  some  being  more  or  less  clearly 
spurious — that  is,  very  different  from  or  much  later 
in  character  than  the  rest,  while  all  of  the  others 
show  signs  of  interpolation.  Taken  as  they  stand, 
however,  they  reveal  a  remarkable  ignorance  of  the 
greater  part  of  the  narratives  in  the  Gospels,  and  of 
the  whole  body  of  the  teachings  there  ascribed  to 
Jesus.  In  three  respects  only  do  the  Pauline  writings 
give  any  support  to  the  histories  later  accepted  by  the 
Christian  Church.  They  habitually  speak  of  Jesus  as 
crucified,  and  as  having  risen  from  the  dead  ;  they 
contain  one  account  of  the  institution  of  the  Lord's 
Supper,  in  agreement  with  the  gospel  account ;  and 
they  make  one  mention  of  "  the  twelve."  But  the  two 
latter  allusions  occur  in  passages  (1  Cor.  xi.  and  xv.) 
which  have  every  mark  of  interpolation ;  and  when 
they  are  withdrawn  the  Pauline  letters  tell  only  of  a 
cult,  Jewish  in  origin,  in  which  a  crucified  Jesus — 
called  the  Messiah  or  Christos  or  Anointed  One — 
figures  as  a  saving  sacrifice,  but  counts  for  absolutely 


DOCUMENTARY  CLUES.  3 

nothing  as  a  teacher  or  even  as  a  wonder-worker. 
A  Eucharist  or  religious  meal  is  celebrated  in  his 
name,  but  no  mention  is  made  of  any  teaching  uttered 
by  the  founder.  And  nothing  in  the  epistles  enables 
us  even  to  date  them  independently  of  the  gospel 
narratives,  which  they  so  strangely  fail  to  confirm. 
Thus  the  case  stands  with  the  New  Testament  very 
much  as  with  the  Old.  As  the  Book  of  Judges  reveals 
a  state  of  Hebrew  life  quite  incompatible  with  that 
described  in  the  Pentateuch  as  having  preceded  it,  so 
do  the  epistles  of  Paul  reveal  a  stage  of  Christist 
propaganda  incompatible  with  any  such  prior  develop- 
ment as  is  set  forth  in  the  gospel.  And  the  conclu- 
sion in  the  two  cases  is  the  same :  that  the  documents 
setting  forth  the  prior  developments  are  not  only  later 
in  composition  but  substantially  fictitious,  even  where 
they  do  not  tell  of  supernatural  events. 

What  needs  to  be  explained  in  both  cases  is  the  way 
in  which  the  later  narratives  came  to  be  compiled. 
Within  a  hundred  years  from  the  date  commonly 
assigned  to  the  Crucifixion  there  are  Gentile  traces  of 
a  Jesuist  or  Christist  movement  deriving  from  Jewry, 
and  possessing  a  gospel  or  memoir  as  well  as  some 
of  the  Pauline  and  other  epistles,  both  spurious  and 
genuine  ;  but  the  gospel  then  current  is  seen  to  have 
contained  some  matter  not  preserved  in  the  canonical 
four,  and  to  have  lacked  much  that  those  contain. 
Of  those  traces  the  earliest  are  found  in  one  epistle  of 
Clement  called  Bishop  of  Rome  (fl.  about  100),  which, 
whether  genuine  or  not,  is  ancient,  and  in  the  older 
form  of  the  epistles  ascribed  to  the  Martyr  Ignatius 
(d.  about  115  '?)  of  which  the  same  may  be  said.  About 
the  middle  of  the  second  century  the  writings  of  Justin 
Martyr  tell  of  a  Christist  memoir,  but  show  no 


4  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

knowledge  of  the  Pauline  epistles.  All  alike  tell  of 
a  spreading  cult,  with  a  theology  not  yet  coherently 
dogmatic,  founding  mainly  on  a  crucified  Jesus,  faith 
in  whom  ensures  salvation. 

Like  the  letters  of  Paul,  those  ascribed  to  Clement 
and  Ignatius  tell  of  schisms  and  strifes  in  the 
churches :  that  is  the  constant  note  of  Christian  history 
from  first  to  last.  As  to  rites,  we  have  but  a  bare 
mention  of  the  eucharist  and  of  baptism ;  the  story  of 
the  founder's  parentage  is  still  unknown,  and  his 
miracles  are  as  unheard  of  as  most  of  his  teachings. 
There  is  nothing  in  Clement,  or  in  the  older  Ignatian 
epistles,  or  in  that  ascribed  to  Poiycarp  (circa  150),  or 
in  that  of  Barnabas  (same  period),  to  show  knowledge 
of  the  existing  gospels  of  Luke  or  John  ;  a  solitary 
parallel  to  Luke  being  rather  a  proof  that  the  passage 
echoed  had  been  taken  from  some  earlier  document ; 
and  the  gospel  actually  cited  as  late  as  Justin  is 
certainly  not  identical  with  either  Mark  or  Matthew. 
Even  from  Paul  there  is  hardly  any  quotation ;  and 
Clement,  who  mentions  or  is  made  to  mention  his 
epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  pens  a  long  passage  in 
praise  of  love  which  has  no  quotation  from  the 
apostle's  famous  chapter  on  that  head,  though  it 
would  have  seemed  made  for  his  purpose.  In  view 
of  their  lax  way  of  quoting  the  Old  Testament  we  may 
infer  that  the  early  fathers  or  forgers  had  few  manu- 
scripts ;  and  it  is  plain  that  they  set  no  such  store  by 
Christian  documents  as  they  did  by  the  Jewish ;  but 
the  fact  remains  that  they  fail  to  vouch  for  much  even 
of  those  Pauline  epistles  which  commonly  rank  as 
incontestable.  At  times,  as  in  the  Pauline  use  of  the 
word  cktroma  (I  Cor.  xv.  8),  which  occurs  in  a  similar 
phrase  in  one  of  the  Ignatian  epistles,  there  is  reason 


DOCUMENTARY  CLUES.  5 

to  conclude  that  the  "  apostolic  "  writing  has  been 
interpolated  in  imitation  of  the  "  post-apostolic." 

It  does  not  indeed  follow  that  documents  or 
chapters  not  quoted  or  utilised  by  the  fathers  were  in 
their  day  non-existent.  The  letters  of  Paul,  supposing 
them  to  be  genuine,  would  in  any  case  be  only 
gradually  made  common  property.  All  the  evidence 
goes  to  show  that  the  early  Christians  were  for  the 
most  part  drawn  from  the  illiterate  classes  ;  and  the 
age  of  abundant  manuscripts  would  begin  only  with 
the  age  of  educated  converts.  But  what  is  inconceiv- 
able is  that  one  so  placed  as  Paul  should  never  once 
cite  the  teachings  of  the  Founder,  if  such  teachings 
were  current  in  his  day  in  any  shape  ;  and  what  is 
extremely  improbable  is  that  one  so  placed  as 
Clement,  or  one  forging  or  interpolating  in  his  name, 
should  possess  Paul's  first  epistle  to  the  Corinthians 
as  it  now  stands,  and  yet  should  barely  mention  it  in 
a  letter  to  the  same  church  dealing  with  almost  the 
same  problems.  In  the  first  case,  we  are  forced  to 
conclude  that  the  gospel  narratives  were  non-existent 
for  the  writer  or  writers  of  the  Pauline  epistles  up  to 
the  point  of  the  two  interpolations  which  allege  an 
accepted  tradition ;  and  that  the  Pauline  epistles 
themselves  are  nowhere  quite  certainly  genuine.  Such 
irremovable  doubt  is  the  Nemesis  of  the  early 
Christian  habits  of  forgery  and  fiction. 

There  emerges,  however,  the  residual  fact  that  Paul 
ranked  in  the  second  century  as  a  historical  and 
natural  personage,  in  whose  name  it  was  worth  while 
to  forge ;  even  as  for  Paul's  period  Jesus  was  a 
historical  personage,  not  supposed  to  be  super- 
naturally  born,  though  credited  with  a  supernatural 
resurrection.  Broadly  speaking,  the  age  of  an  early 


6  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

Christian  document  is  found  to  be  in  the  ratio  of  its 
narrative  bareness,  its  lack  of  biographical  myth,  its 
want  of  relation  to  the  existing  gospels.  As  between 
the  shorter  and  the  longer  form  of  the  Ignatian 
epistles,  the  question  of  priority  is  at  once  settled  by 
the  frequent  citations  from  the  gospels  and  from  Paul 
in  the  latter,  and  the  lack  of  them  in  the  former. 
But  all  the  documents  alike  appear  to  point  to  a 
movement  which  took  its  rise  among  the  Jews  long 
before  the  destruction  of  the  temple  of  Jerusalem  by 
Titus  in  the  year  70,  and  subsisted  in  Jewry  long 
afterwards;  and,  as  the  Jewish  environment  lacked 
many  of  the  forces  of  change  present  in  the  Gentile, 
it  is  to  the  Jewish  form  of  the  cult  that  we  must  first 
look  if  we  would  trace  its  growth. 


§  2.  The  Earliest  Christian  Sects. 

The  first  properly  historical  as  distinct  from  the 
"  scriptural  "  notices  of  the  Church  at  Jerusalem  tell 
of  a  quasi-Christian  sect  there,  known  as  Ebionites  or 
Ebionim,  a  Hebrew  word  which  signified  simply 
"the  poor."  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  Gentile 
Christians  of  the  end  of  the  second  century  they  were 
heretics,  seeing  that  they  used  a  form  of  the  Gospel  of 
Matthew  lacking  the  first  two  chapters,  denied  the 
divinity  of  Jesus,  and  rejected  the  apostleship  of 
Paul.  As  they  likewise  rejected  the  Hebrew  prophets, 
accepting  only  the  Pentateuch,  there  is  some  reason 
to  suppose  that  they  were  either  of  Samaritan 
derivation  or  the  descendants  of  an  old  element  in 
the  Judean  population  which,  from  the  time  of  Ezra 
onwards,  had  rejected  the  later  Biblical  writings  as 


THE  EARLIEST  CHRISTIAN  SECTS.  7 

the  Samaritans  did.  On  either  view  it  would  follow 
that  the  Jesuist  movement  rooted  from  the  first  in  a 
lower  stratum  of  the  population,  hostile  to  orthodox  or 
Pharisaic  Judaism,  as  were  the  Sadducees  among  the 
upper  classes.  The  Samaritans  made  special  account 
of  Joshua  (  =  Jesus),  having  a  book  which  bore  his 
name ;  and  we  shall  see  later  that  that  name  was 
anciently  a  divine  one  for  some  Syrian  populations. 

Later  notices  bring  to  light  the  existence  of  a 
smaller  sect,  called  by  the  Greeks  Nazoraioi, 
Nazarites  or  Nazaraeans,  the  term  said  in  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles  (xxiv.  5)  to  have  been  applied  to  the 
early  Jesuists,  and  often  applied  in  that  book  as  well 
as  in  the  gospels  to  Jesus.  According  to  one  account 
this  sect  objected  to  be  called  Christians,  though  it 
appears  to  have  been  on  the  assumption  of  their 
derivation  from  the  first  Christians  that  they  had  not 
earlier  been  stamped  as  heretics.  Through  the  two 
sects  under  notice  may  be  gathered  the  probable 
development  of  early  Jesuism. 

It  cannot  have  been  from  the  place-name  Nazareth 
that  any  Jesuist  sect  were  first  called  Nazaraeans,  a 
term  standing  either  for  the  variously- spelt  Nazir 
(Nazarite,  or,  properly,  Nazirite)  of  the  Old 
Testament,  or  for  a  compound  of  the  term  netzer 
(  =  a  branch),  used  in  the  passage  of  Isaiah  (xi.  1) 
supposed  to  be  cited  in  the  first  gospel  (ii.  23). 
Even  the  form  "  Nazarene,"  sometimes  substituted  in 
the  gospels  for  the  other,  could  not  conceivably  have 
been,  to  start  with,  the  name  for  a  sect  founded  by  a 
man  who,  like  the  gospel  Jesus,  was  merely  said  to 
have  been  reared  at  a  village  called  Nazareth  or 
Nazara,  and  never  taught  there.  In  none  of  the 
Pauline  or  other  canonical  epistles,  however,  is  Jesus 


8  PEIMITIVE  CHKISTIANITY. 

ever  called  Nazarite,  or  Nazarene,  or  "  of  Nazareth  "; 
and  the  Ebionite  gospel,  lacking  the  Nazareth  story, 
would  lack  any  such  appellation.  The  Ebionite  sect, 
then,  appears  to  have  stood  for  the  first  form  of  the 
cult,  and  to  have  developed  the  first  form  of  gospel ; 
while  the  later  Nazarsean  sect  appears  to  be  either  a 
post-Pauline  but  Judaic  growth  from  the  Ebionite 
roots,  or  a  post-Pauline  grafting  of  another  movement 
on  the  Jesuism  of  the  Ebionites. 

Ebionism,  to  begin  with,  whether  ancient  and 
quasi- Samaritan  or  a  product  of  innovation  in  the 
immediately  pre-Ronian  period,  is  intelligible  as  the 
label  of  a  movement  which  held  by  the  saying 
"  Blessed  are  ye  poor  "  or  "  poor  in  spirit,"  found  in 
the  so-called  Sermon  on  the  Plain  and  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  (Luke  vi.  20;  Matt.  v.  3).  In  poverty- 
stricken  Jewry,  with  a  prophetic  and  proverbial 
literature  in  which,  as  generally  in  the  East,  the  poor 
are  treated  with  sympathy,  such  a  label  would  readily 
grow  popular,  as  it  had  done  for  the  Buddhist 
"  mendicants  "  in  India.  Its  association,  however, 
with  a  cult  of  a  slain  and  Messianic  Jesus  raises  the 
question  whether  the  latter  was  not  the  germ  of  the 
movement ;  and  there  are  some  grounds  for  supposing 
that  the  sect  may  have  arisen  around  one  Jesus  the 
son  of  Pandira,  who  is  mentioned  in  the  Talmud  as 
having  been  hanged  on  a  tree  and  stoned  to  death  at 
Lydda,  on  the  eve  of  a  Passover,  in  the  reign  of 
Alexander  Jannaeus.  It  was  customary  to  execute 
important  offenders  at  that  season ;  and  as  the 
Paschal  feast  had  a  specifically  atoning  significance, 
a  teacher  then  executed  might  come  to  be  regarded  as 
an  atoning  sacrifice.  But  there  are  traces  in  the  Old 
Testament  of  a  Messianic  movement  connected  with 


THE  EARLIEST  CHRISTIAN  SECTS.  9 

the  name  Jesus  at  some  uncertain  period  before  the 
Christian  era.  In  the  book  of  Zechariah,  of  which 
the  first  six  chapters  appear  to  be  much  later  than  the 
rest,  there  is  named  one  Jesus  (Heb.  Joshua),  a  high 
priest,  who  figures  Messianically  as  "  the  Branch," 
and  is  doubly  crowned  as  priest  and  king.  In  the 
obscurity  which  covers  most  of  the  prophetic  literature, 
it  is  difficult  to  say  for  what  historic  activities  this 
piece  of  symbolism  stands ;  but  it  must  have  stood  for 
something.  From  it,  in  any  case,  we  gather  the  fact 
that  much  stress  was  laid  on  the  symbol  of  "  the 
Branch  "  (or  "  sprout  "),  called  in  the  present  text  of 
Zechariah  tsemaeh,  but  in  Isaiah  nazar  or  netzer. 
Among  the  Gentiles  that  symbol  belonged  to  the 
worships  of  several  Gods  and  goddesses — as  Mithra, 
Attis,  Apollo,  and  Demeter — and  appears  to  have  meant 
the  principle  of  life,  typified  in  vegetation ;  among  the 
Jews  it  was  certainly  bound  up  with  the  general 
belief  in  a  coming  Messiah  who  should  restore  Jewish 
independence.  It  is  not  impossible,  then,  that  a 
Messianic  party  were  early  called  "  Netzerites  "  or 
"  Nazarreans  "  on  that  account ;  and  such  a  sect  could 
in  the  Judaic  fashion  find  all  manner  of  significances 
in  the  name  of  the  high  priest,  since  "  Jesus " 
(= Joshua)  signified  Saviour,  and  the  ancient  and 
mythical  Joshua  was  a  typical  deliverer.  The  Mosaic 
promise  (Deut  xviii.  15)  of  a  later  prophet  and  leader, 
which  in  the  Acts  is  held  to  apply  to  the  crucified 
Jesus,  had  formerly  been  held  by  Jews  to  apply  to 
the  Joshua  who  succeeded  Moses  ;  and  in  that  case 
there  is  reason  to  surmise  that  an  older  myth  or  cult 
centring  round  the  name  had  given  rise  to  the 
historical  fiction  of  the  Hebrew  books.  But  the 
subject  must  remain  obscure.  There  is  even  some 


10  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

doubtful  evidence  of  the  later  existence  of  a  sect  of 
"  Jesseans,"  possibly  distinct  from  the  historical 
"  Essenes,"  who  may  have  founded  on  Isaiah's 
"  Branch  from  the  roots  of  Jesse." 

The  following,  then,  are  the  historical  possibilities. 
A  poor  sect  or  caste  of  Ebionim,  marked  off  from 
orthodox  Jewry,  and  akin  to  the  population  of 
Samaria,  may  have  subsisted  throughout  the  post-exilic 
period,  and  may  either  have  preserved  an  old 
Jesuist  cult  with  a  sacrament  or  adopted  a  later 
Samaritan  movement.  From  that  might  have  been 
developed  the  "Nazarene"  sect  of  Christist  history. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  sect  of  "  Nazaraeans,"  holding 
by  the  Messianic  name  of  Jesus,  may  have  existed  in 
the  pre-Roman  period,  but  may  have  come  to  figure 
specially  as  Ebionim  or  "  poor  "  when  the  earlier  or 
political  form  of  Messianic  hope  waned.  Their  name 
may  also  have  led  to  their  being  either  confused  or 
conjoined  with  the  "  Nazirites  "  of  Jewry,  a  numerous 
but  fluctuating  body,  under  temporary  vows  of  absten- 
tion. But  that  body,  again,  may  have  become 
generally  Messianist,  and  may  have  adopted  the 
Messianic  "  Branch "  in  the  verbalising  spirit  so 
common  in  Jewry,  while  continuing  to  call  itself 
Nazarite  in  the  old  sense.  It  is  indeed  on  record 
that  some  Jews  made  vows  to  "be  a  Nazarite  when 
the  Son  of  David  should  come  ";  and  such  were  free 
to  drink  wine  on  Sabbaths,  though  not  on  week  days. 
Such  Nazarites  could  have  constituted  the  first  sacra- 
mental assemblies  of  the  Christists.  And  as  the 
Hebrew  Nazir  (Sept.  Gr.  Natoraiot)  had  the  meaning 
of  "consecrated"  or  "  holy  to  the  Lord,"  the  early 
Gentile  Christians  may  very  well  have  translated 
the  word  into  their  own  languages  instead  of 


THE  EARLIEST  CHRISTIAN  SECTS.  11 

transliterating  it.  On  that  view  the  hac/ioi  or  "saints" 
of  the  Acts  and  the  epistles  and  the  Apocalypse  may 
have  strictly  stood  for  "  the  Nazirites,"  "  the 
dcvoti." 

Seeing,  however,  that  the  later  Nazaraeans  are 
reported  to  have  adopted  the  (obviously  late)  first  and 
second  chapters  of  Matthew,  while  the  Ebionites 
rejected  them  ;  and  seeing  that  these  chapters, 
embodying  the  story  of  the  flight  into  Egypt,  make 
Jesus  at  once  a  Jewish  and  a  Gentile  Christ,  it  would 
appear  that  the  Gentile  movement  had  then  reacted 
on  the  Jewish,  and  that  the  ultra- Jewish  Jesuists  had 
nowr  relinquished  the  name  of  Nazaraean  to  the  less 
rigid,  who  at  this  stage  probably  used  a  Greek 
gospel.  Finally,  as  the  original  sense  of  "  Nazirite  " 
implied  either  a  Judaic  vow — irksome  to  the  Gentile 
Christians,  and  probably  to  many  of  the  Jewish — 
or  a  specially  Judaic  character  in  the  founder,  and  as 
the  political  implication  of  the  "netzer"  (supposing 
that  to  have  adhered  to  the  sect-name)  was  anti- 
Roman,  there  would  arise  a  disposition  to  seek  for  the 
term  another  significance.  This,  doubtless  on  the 
suggestion  of  Gentiles  accustomed  to  hear  Jewish 
sectaries  called  "  Galileans,"  was  found  in  the 
figment  that  the  founder,  though  declared  to  have 
been  Messianically  born  in  Bethlehem,  had  been 
reared  in  the  Galilean  village  of  Nazareth  or  Nazara. 
Instead  of  being  a  historical  datum,  as  is  assumed  by 
so  many  rationalising  historians,  that  record  is  really 
a  pragmatic  myth  superimposed  on  the  Bethlehem 
myth.  The  textual  analysis  shows  that  wherever  it 
occurs  in  the  gospels  and  Acts  the  name  Nazareth 
has  been  foisted  on  the  documents. 

Hence,  however,  arose  the  Greek  form  "  Nazarenos," 


12  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

which  finally  became  to  a  certain  extent  imposed  on 
the  canonical  gospels,  but  especially  on  that  of  Mark, 
which  appears  to  have  been  redacted  under  Roman 
authority  in  the  interests  of  ecclesiastical  order. 
Naturally,  the  Latin  Vulgate  adopted  the  same  term 
throughout  the  Gospels  and  Acts,  save  in  the  crucial 
text,  Matt.  ii.  23.  Otherwise  the  texts  are  almost 
wholly  in  favour  of  the  form  "Nazoraios" — that  is, 
Nazaraean  or  Nazirite. 

§  3.  Personality  of  the  Nominal  Founder. 

Even  for  minds  wont  to  see  mere  myth  in  the  idea  of 
such  long-worshipped  Saviours  as  Apollo  and  Osiris, 
Krishna  and  Mithra,  it  cannot  but  be  startling  to 
meet  for  the  first  time  the  thought  that  there  is  no 
historic  reality  in  a  figure  so  long  revered  and  beloved 
by  half  the  human  race  as  the  Jesus  of  the  gospels. 
It  was  only  after  generations  of  scrutiny  that 
rationalism  began  to  doubt  the  actuality  of  the 
Teacher  it  had  unhesitatingly  surmised  behind  the 
impossible  demigod  of  the  records.  The  first,  indeed, 
to  see  in  him  sheer  myth  were  the  students  who  were 
intent  chiefly  on  the  myths  of  action  in  the  story  :  to 
return  to  the  teaching  as  such  was  to  recover  the  old 
impression  of  a  real  voice.  It  is  only  after  a  further 
analysis — a  scrupulous  survey  of  the  texts — that  the 
inquirer  can  realise  how  illusory  that  impression 
really  is. 

The  proposition  is  not  that  the  mere  lateness  of  the 
gospels  deprives  them  of  authority  as  evidence  (for 
they  proceeded  on  earlier  documents),  but  that 
throughout  they  are  demonstrably  results  of  accretion 
through  several  generations,  and  that  the  earliest 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  NOMINAL  FOUNDER.  13 

sections  were  put  together  long  after  the  period  they 
profess  to  deal  with.  The  older  portions  of  the 
Pauline  epistles  show  no  knowledge  of  any  Jesuine 
biography  or  any  Jesuine  teaching — a  circumstance 
which  suggests  that  the  Jesus  of  Paul  is  much  more 
remote  from  Paul's  day  than  is  admitted  by  the 
records.  Later,  the  Christian  writers  are  found  to 
have  certain  narratives,  evidently  expanded  from 
generation  to  generation,  till  at  the  end  of  the  second 
century  there  exist  the  four  canonical  gospels,  which, 
however,  are  not  known  to  have  been  even  then 
completed.  Gelsus,  in  his  anti- Christian  treatise, 
supposed  to  have  been  written  between  170  and  180, 
speaks  of  the  gospels  as  having  undergone  endless 
alteration  ;  and  additions  were  still  possible  after  the 
time  of  Origen,  who  weakly  replied  to  Celsus  that  the 
alterations  were  the  work  of  heretics.  Side  by  side 
with  the  four  there  had  grown  up  a  multitude  of 
"  apocryphal  "  gospels,  of  which  some  were  long  as 
popular  as  the  canonical,  though  all  were  ultimately 
discarded  by  the  Councils  of  the  Church.  The 
principle  of  exclusion  was  essentially  that  of  the 
tentative  criticism  of  modern  times — the  critical  sense 
of  the  inferiority  of  mere  tales  of  wonders  to  narratives 
which  contained,  besides  wonders,  elements  of  moral 
instruction. 

In  natural  course,  criticism  first  rejects  miraculous 
episodes,  next  excludes  teachings  which  profess  to 
come  from  a  God-man,  and  then  seeks  to  infer  a  per- 
sonality from  those  which  are  left ;  but  inasmuch  as 
those,  like  the  rest,  are  disparate  and  even  con- 
tradictory, the  process  usually  ends  in  an  avowedly 
arbitrary  selection.  And  to  all  such  selection  the 
loyal  study  of  the  texts  is  fatal.  To  put  aside,  as 


14  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

some  still  do,  the  fourth  gospel,  and  then  take  a  stand 
on  the  synoptics,  is  merely  to  arrest  factitiously  the 
critical  process,  which,  when  consistently  pursued, 
leads  to  the  conviction  that  the  synoptics  were  built 
up  by  the  same  order  of  impulses,  under  the  same 
conditions  of  unchecked  invention  and  interpolation, 
as  gave  rise  to  the  most  obvious  fictions  in  the  gospel 
of  "John."  We  are  led  without  escape  to  the  con- 
clusion that  no  strain  of  teaching  in  the  gospels  can 
be  fathered  on  the  shadowy  founder,  who  for  Paul  is 
only  a  crucified  phantom.  The  humanistic  teachings 
are  no  more  primordial,  no  less  capable  of  interpola- 
tion, than  the  mystical  and  the  oracular.  Some  of 
the  best  sayings  are  among  the  very  latest ;  some 
of  the  narrowest  belong  to  the  earliest  tradition. 
Collectively,  they  tell  of  a  hundred  hands. 

Realising  that  the  nominal  founder  of  Paul's 
Jesuism  may  possibly  be  the  slain  Jesus  Pandira  of  the 
Talmud,  a  hundred  years  "  before  Christ,"  we  next 
ask  whether  any  such  founder  must  not  be  supposed 
to  have  taught  something,  to  make  men  see  in  him  a 
Messiah  and  preserve  his  name.  The  answer  is  that 
the  name  alone  was  a  large  part  of  the  qualification 
for  a  Jewish  Messiah  ;  that  the  chance  of  his  execution 
on  the  eve  of  the  Passover  would  give  it  for  some  Jews 
a  mystic  significance  ;  and  that  a  story  of  his  resurrec- 
tion, a  story  easily  floated  in  case  of  an  alleged 
sorcerer,  such  as  the  Talmudic  Jesus,  would  complete 
the  conditions  required  for  the  growth  of  a  myth  and 
a  cult,  seeing  that  the  Jews  traditionally  expected  the 
Messiah  to  come  at  midnight  of  the  day  of  Passover. 
Doubtless  the  alleged  sorcerer  may  have  been  an 
innovating  teacher.  It  is  quite  possible,  indeed,  that 
as  a  bearer  of  the  fated  name  he  may  have  made 


PERSONALITY  OF  THE  NOMINAL  FOUNDER.  15 

Messianic  claims  :  the  form  of  death  said  to  have  heen 
inflicted  on  him  suggests  energetic  priestly  or  political 
hostility.  But  of  his  utterances  history  preserves  no 
trace  :  even  in  the  Talmud  his  story  has  passed  into 
legendary  form.  Thus  it  is  not  even  certain  that  the 
earliest  Jesuism  took  shape  round  the  memory  of  an 
actual  man.  The  mythic  Joshua  (Jesus)  of  the  Old 
Testament  is  seen  to  have  been  in  all  likelihood,  like 
Samson,  an  ancient  Semitic  but  non- Jewish  Sun- 
God,  his  name,  "  the  Saviour,"  being  a  common 
divine  epithet ;  and  as  he  is  in  Arab  tradition  the  son 
of  the  mythic  Miriam  (Mary) ,  it  may  be  that  the  roots 
of  the  historic  Christian  cult  go  back  to  an  immemorial 
Semitic  antiquity,  when  already  the  name  of  Jesus 
was  divine.  In  the  shadow  of  that  name  its  origins 
are  hidden. 

When  the  historic  Church  set  about  a  statement  of 
its  history,  it  could  not  even  fix  satisfactorily  the  year 
of  its  supposed  founder's  birth ;  and  the  "  Christian 
era  "  was  made  to  begin  some  years — two,  three,  four, 
five,  or  eight — after  those  on  which  the  chronologists 
were  later  fain  to  fix,  by  way  of  conforming  to  their 
most  precise  document.  Their  data,  however,  have 
no  more  value  than  any  other  guess.  So  little  of  the 
semblance  of  historical  testimony  do  the  gospels  yield 
that  it  is  impossible  to  establish  from  them  any 
proposition  as  to  the  duration  of  the  God-man's 
ministry ;  and  the  early  Church  in  general  held  by 
the  tradition  that  it  lasted  exactly  one  year,  an 
opinion  which  again  points  straight  to  myth,  since 
it  is  either  a  dogmatic  assumption  based  on  the 
formula  of  "  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord,"  or  a 
simple  reversion  to  the  story  of  the  Sun-God.  Of  the 
life  of  the  alleged  teacher  from  the  age  of  twelve  to  thirty 


16  PBIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

—another  mythological  period — there  is  not  a  single 
trace,  mythical  or  non-mythical,  though  at  his  death 
he  is  represented  as  the  centre  of  a  large  and  adoring 
following.  Ultimately,  his  birth  was  placed  at  the 
winter  solstice,  the  birth-day  of  the  Sun-God  in  the 
most  popular  cults ;  and  while  that  is  fixed  as  an 
anniversary,  the  date  of  his  crucifixion  is  made  to 
vary  from  year  to  year  in  order  to  conform  to  the 
astronomical  principle  on  which  the  Jews,  following  the 
sun-worshippers,  had  fixed  their  Passover.  Between 
those  fabulous  points  everything  the  gospels  affirm  as 
biographical  fact  is  fortuitous  or  purposive  invention, 
which  on  scientific  analysis  "  leaves  not  a  wrack 
behind  "  in  the  nature  of  objective  history. 

Before  accepting  such  a  verdict  the  sympathetic 
seeker  is  apt  to  grasp  at  the  old  argument  that  such  a 
figure  as  the  gospel  Jesus  cannot  have  been  created 
either  by  fortuitous  fable  or  by  fictions ;  that  its  moral 
stature  is  above  that  of  any  of  the  men  we  can  trace 
in  the  gospel-making  period  ;  that  its  spiritual  unity 
excludes  the  theory  of  a  literary  mosaic.  It  must  first 
be  answered  that  these  positions  beg  the  question  and 
falsify  the  data.  That  the  figure  of  the  gospel  Jesus 
is  actually  devoid  of  moral  unity  is  made  clear  by  the 
very  attempts  to  unify  it,  since  they  one  and  all  leave 
out  much  of  the  records  ;  and  the  claim  to  moral 
superiority  collapses,  even  apart  from  the  obvious  fact 
that  the  texts  are  aggregations,  as  soon  as  we  compare 
them  with  the  contemporary  and  previous  ethical  litera- 
ture of  the  Jews,  Greeks,  Romans,  and  Hindus.  There 
is  not  one  teaching  in  the  gospels  that  is  not  there 
paralleled  ;  and  the  passages  which  have  been  claimed 
as  most  characteristic — for  instance,  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount — are  mere  compilations  of  earlier  Jewish 


MYTH  OF  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES.  17 

utterances.  Thus  the  unity  credited  to  the  records,  and 
the  personality  ascribed  to  the  founder,  are  but  creations 
of  the  same  sympathetic  human  imagination  that 
wove  tissues  of  poetry  and  pathos  round  the  figures  of 
Dionysos  and  Buddha,  and  framed  for  the  cult  of 
Krishna  its  most  impressive  document  when  the  cult 
was  already  ancient  beyond  reckoning.  As  man  has 
made  his  Gods,  so  he  has  made  his  Christs :  it  would 
be  strange  indeed  if  the  faculty  which  wrought  the 
one  could  not  create  the  other. 


§  4.  Myth  of  the  Twelve  Apostles. 

In  one  of  the  Pauline  epistles,  which  are  usually 
understood  to  belong  to  the  generation  immediately 
following  on  that  of  the  founder,  there  is  mention  of 
three  chief  Apostles  with  whom  Paul  had  disputes,  but 
none  of  any  contemporary  group  of  Twelve ;  and  the 
only  historical  allusion  to  the  latter  number  is  in  one 
of  the  interpolations  in  First  Corinthians,  where  it 
appears  to  be  a  patch  upon  a  patch.  In  the  Acts  of 
the  Apostles,  which  though  a  fraudulent  is  an  ancient 
compilation,  there  is  a  preliminary  story  of  the 
election  of  an  apostle  to  fill  the  place  of  Judas, 
deceased  and  disgraced ;  but  not  only  is  there  no 
further  pretence  of  such  a  process  of  completion,  the 
majority  of  the  twelve  themselves  speedily  disappear 
from  the  history.  Once  more  we  are  dealing  with  a 
myth.  In  the  Apocalypse,  again,  after  the  original 
Judaic  document  has  pictured  a  New  Jerusalem  with 
twelve  gates  and  angels,  named  after  the  twelve  tribes, 
the  Christian  interpolator  has  betrayed  himself  by 
the  awkward  invention  of  twelve  "  basement  courses  " 

c 


18  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

named  after  the  "  twelve  Apostles  of  the  Lamb," 
where  a  Christian  author  would  have  given  the 
apostles  the  gates  if  anything,  had  a  list  of  twelve 
Jesuist  apostles  existed.  In  heaven  the  Lamb  is 
surrounded,  not  by  twelve  disciples,  but  by  the  "  four 
and  twenty  presbyters  "  of  the  older  cult,  which  knew 
no  divinely-ordained  coiixge  of  twelve. 

In  the  gospels  the  lack  of  historic  foundation  is 
no  less  decisive.  Circumstantial  but  irreconcilable 
accounts,  obviously  mythical,  are  given  of  the  selection 
of  four  or  five  apostles,  whereafter  the  narratives, 
without  a  word  of  preparation  or  explanation,  proceed 
to  a  sudden  constitution  of  the  group  of  twelve,  with 
only  the  mythological  detail,  in  one  case,  that  they 
were  "  called  "  by  the  Master  on  a  mountain.  Thus 
the  element  of  the  Twelve  is  not  even  an  early  item  in 
the  records,  but  has  been  imposed  on  documents  which 
set  out  with  no  such  datum,  but  with  primary  groups 
of  five,  four,  and  three. 

The  historical  solution  of  the  problem  as  to  the 
source  of  the  fiction  is  now  tolerably  certain.  It  is  on 
record  that  the  Jewish  High  Priest  of  the  latter  days 
of  the  Temple,  and  after  him  the  Patriarch  at 
Tiberias,  employed  certain  "  Apostles  "  as  tribute-col- 
lectors and  supervisors  of  the  many  faithful  Jews 
scattered  throughout  the  neighbouring  kingdoms. 
By  common  Jewish  usage  these  would  number  twelve. 
As  the  dispersed  Jewish  race  multiplied  abroad  after 
the  fall  of  the  Temple,  it  is  probable  that  under  the 
upper  grade  of  twelve  there  was  created  a  body  of 
seventy-two  collectors,  who  answered  to  the  traditional 
number  of  "  the  nations  "  in  Jewish  lore.  Such  a 
body  is  the  probable  basis  for  the  admittedly  mythical 
"  seventy  "  or  "  seventy-two  "  of  the  third  Gospel.  At 


MYTH  OF  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES.  19 

this  stage  the  twelve  appear  to  have  exercised  chiefly 
teaching  and  regulative  functions,  for  it  is  clear  that 
the  quasi-Christian  document,  The  Teaching  of  the 
Tic  dee  Apostles,  recovered  in  1873  and  published  in 
1883,  was  originally  a  purely  Jewish  manual  of  moral 
exhortation,  and  as  such  bore  its  existing  title.  To 
the  six  or  seven  purely  Judaic  and  non-  Jesuist  chapters 
which  seem  to  constitute  the  original  document,  and 
which  contain  passages  copied  in  the  so-called  Sermon 
on  the  Mount,  there  were  gradually  added  others, 
introducing  the  rites  of  baptism  and  the  eucharist, 
the  name  of  Jesus,  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  and 
various  rules  of  economic  procedure.  In  this  gradual 
fashion  a  Jesuist  cult,  in  which  Jesus  is  called  the 
"  servant "  of  God,  was  grafted  on  an  originally 
Judaic  moral  teaching,  the  prestige  of  the  Jewish 
"Twelve  Apostles"  being  all  the  while  carried  on. 
It  was  to  give  a  Christian  origin  for  this  document 
that  the  gospel  myth  of  the  Twelve  Apostles  was 
framed.  After  the  time  of  Athanasius,  the  expanded 
document,  being  still  unduly  Judaic  and  otherwise 
unsuitable  for  the  purposes  of  the  organised  Church, 
passed  into  disuse  ;  but  the  myth  remained. 

As  regards  the  three  "chief"  apostles  named  in 
one  of  the  Pauline  epistles,  there  is  a  reasonable 
presumption  that  they  were  either  leading  propagan- 
dists of  the  Jesuist  cult  as  it  existed  at  the  time  of  the 
writing,  or  so  reputed  by  later  tradition ;  but  the 
assumption  that  they  had  been  associates  and  disciples 
of  the  founder  must  be  abandoned  with  the  rest  of  the 
gospel  tradition.  They  were  necessarily  woven  into 
the  gospel  narrative  by  the  later  compilers  ;  but  the 
Epistle  to  the  Galatians  lies  under  the  general  sus- 
picion of  having  been  interpolated,  if  not  wholly 


20  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

forged  ;  and  its  very  naming  of  the  Judaic  apostles  is 
as  much  a  ground  for  question  as  a  datum  for  con- 
struction. It  is  probable,  further,  that  the  title 
"  brethren  of  the  Lord  "  was  originally  a  group-name, 
and  that  the  literal  construction  of  it  was  a  miscon- 
ception by  the  later  interpolators  of  the  epistles  and 
the  gospels.  The  name  of  Peter,  finally,  became  a 
nucleus  for  many  myths  ;  and  the  two  epistles  which 
bear  his  name  have  so  little  relation  to  the  personality 
set  forth  in  the  gospels  that  both  have  been  widely 
discredited  as  forgeries ;  the  second  having  indeed 
been  so  reputed  in  the  days  of  Eusebius.  The  Simon- 
Petros  (Cephas)  of  the  gospels,  however,  is  in  himself 
a  mere  literary  creation,  all  that  holds  good  being  the 
fact  that  a  tradition  grew  round  the  names  in  question, 
both  of  which  hint  of  mythology, — Petros  ("  the 
Rock  ")  being  the  name  of  an  Egyptian  God  and  of  the 
popular  Eastern  deity  Mithra ;  and  Simon  the  name 
of  a  no  less  popular  Semitic  God.  In  his  final  aspect 
as  leader  of  the  twelve,  basis  of  the  Church,  and 
keeper  of  the  heavenly  keys,  Peter  combines  the 
attributes  of  Mithra  and  of  Janus,  both  official  deities 
of  the  Roman  military  class,  as  well  as  of  the  Egyptian 
Petra — who  is  door-keeper  of  heaven,  earth,  and  the 
under  world. 

The  Epistle  of  James,  by  whomsoever  written,  is  in 
no  sense  a  Christist  document — containing  as  it  does 
not  a  single  Jesuist  or  Christian  doctrine,  save 
perhaps  the  appended  invective  against  the  rich, 
which  is  Ebionitic.  Of  its  two  namings  of  Jesus, 
one  is  clearly  an  interpolation,  and  the  other  is  pre- 
sumptively so.  There  remains  only  a  moral  exhorta- 
tion to  Jews  meeting  in  synagogues,  a  teaching  strictly 
comparable  to  the  original  and  pre-Jesuine  "  Teaching 


MYTH  OF  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES.  21 

of  the  Twelve  Apostles,"  though  the  epistle  makes 
no  mention  of  any  other  apostles.  Such  writing  tells 
of  an  essentially  different  propaganda  from  that  of 
the  Christists  proper ;  and  its  preservation  by  them 
testifies  to  its  priority.  The  epistles  ascribed  to 
John,  on  the  contrary,  belong  to  a  considerably  later 
period  ;  telling  as  they  do  of  a  fanatical  movement 
which  swears  by  the  name  of  Jesus  the  Christ  as  one 
who  has  died  to  take  away  sin,  but  which  is  full  of 
apprehension  as  to  the  advent  and  functions  of  a 
number  of  Antichrists. 

Judas  (loudas),  of  whom  there  is  no  mention  in  any 
of  the  epistles,  and  whose  traditional  treason  is  not 
recognised  in  the  lately-recovered  "  Gospel  of  Peter," 
or  in  the  pseudo-Pauline  reference  to  "  the  twelve," 
is  a  late  creation  ;  having  probably  taken  shape  first 
as  a  simple  loudaios,  "  a  Jew,"  in  an  early  Christian 
mystery  play  of  the  crucifixion  and  resurrection. 
Mythologically,  the  conception  may  derive  from  the 
Diabolos  or  "  Adversary  "  of  Persian  lore,  as  Judas  in 
the  Gospels  is  called  "a  devil";  and  the  tradition 
which  gave  him  red  hair  assimilated  him  to  Typhon? 
the  slayer  of  the  Egyptian  Saviour-God,  Osiris.  The 
story  of  the  betrayal  in  the  gospels  is  in  any  case 
fabulous,  and  its  presence  can  be  best  explained  on 
the  theory  that  such  a  mystery-play,  arising  among 
the  Gentiles,  would  represent  a  Jew  as  betraying  the 
Lord,  even  as  the  twelve  were  represented  as  forsaking 
their  master.  A  bag  to  hold  the  blood-money  would 
be  a  dramatic  accessory,  and  would  originate  the 
view  that  Judas  had  been  the  treasurer  of  the 
apostolic  group. 


PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 


§  5.  Primary  Forms  of  the  Cult. 

In  its  first  traceable  historic  form  Christianity  was 
simply  a  phase  of  Judaism,  being  the  creed  of  a 
small  number  of  Jews  and  Jewish  proselytes  who 
believed  that  the  long-desired  Messiah  had  come  in 
the  person  of  one  Jesus,  who  had  been  so  slain  as  to 
constitute  an  atoning  sacrifice.  Such  believers  were 
wont  to  meet  at  simple  religious  banquets,  of  a  kind 
common  in  the  Greco-Roman  world,  where  they  ate 
and  drank  in  a  semi-ceremonial  way.  A  sacrificial 
banquet  of  this  kind  was  one  of  the  most  universal 
features  of  ancient  religion,  being  originally  the 
typical  tribal  ceremony  ;  and  though  among  the  Jews 
it  had  been  to  a  remarkable  extent  superseded  by 
sacrifices  without  communion,  the  usage  was  once  as 
general  with  them  as  with  the  Gentiles.  If  grown 
rare  in  their  life,  the  idea  was  abundantly  preserved 
in  their  sacred  books.  The  presumption  is  that  such 
a  banquet  was  connected  with  the  Semitic  God-name 
Jesus  or  Joshua  before  the  Christian  era ;  otherwise 
we  must  conclude  that  a  sect  of  Jesuists,  starting 
from  the  bare  belief  in  the  sacrificial  death,  adopted 
arbitrarily  a  kind  of  rite  which  was  identified  with  the 
heathen  worships  of  the  surrounding  Gentiles,  and 
adopted  also  the  Gentile  sun-worshippers'  practice  of 
assembling  by  night.  Paul's  Corinthian  converts  are 
described  as  frequenting  indifferently  the  table  of  Jesus 
("  the  Lord  ")  and  the  table  of  "  daemons  "  — that  is,  of 
heathen  Gods  or  demigods.  As  the  less  orthodox  Jews 
had  long  dabbled  in  similar  "  mysteries,"  there  is  every 
probability  that  private  "Holy  Suppers"  had  been 
practised  even  in  Jewry  by  some  groups  long  before 


PRIMARY  FORMS  OF  THE  CULT.         23 

the  Christian  period,  whether  or  not  in  connection 
with  the  name  of  Jesus  "  the  Saviour."  The  gospel 
phrase,  "  blood  of  the  covenant,"  points  to  a  standing 
usage,  the  original  form  of  which  was  probably  the 
mutual  drinking  of  actual  human  blood  by  the  parties 
to  a  solemn  pledge.  In  the  Hebrew  system  some  such 
covenant  was  held  to  be  set  up  between  the  Deity  and 
the  worshippers  on  the  one  hand,  and  among  the  latter 
themselves  on  the  other,  when  a  sacrifice  was  partaken 
of.  But  it  is  further  probable  that  the  idea  of  a 
mystical  partaking  of  an  atoning  or  inspiring  "  body 
and  blood ' '  was  of  old  standing  in  the  same  kind  of 
connection.  Such  a  practice  was  certainly  part  of  the 
great  Asiatic  cults  of  Dionysos  and  Mith'ra ;  and  as 
the  ancient  idea  of  a  sacrificial  banquet  in  honour  of  a 
God  usually  was  that  in  some  sense  the  worshipped 
power  was  either  eaten,  or  present  as  partaker,  it  is 
more  than  likely  that  any  banquets  in  connection  with 
the  Syrian  worships  of  Adonis  and  (or)  Marnas  (each 
name  ==  "  the  Lord  ")  carried  with  them  the  same 
significance.  In  early  Christian  usage  the  ministrant 
of  the  eucharist  spoke  in  the  person  of  the  founder, 
using  the  formulas  preserved  in  the  gospels ;  and  as 
the  priest  in  the  cult  of  Attis  also  personated  the  God, 
there  is  a  strong  presumption  that  the  same  thing 
had  been  done  in  Jewry  in  the  pre-Christian  period, 
by  way  of  modifying  a  still  older  usage  in  which  a 
deified  victim  was  actually  slain  and  eaten. 

For  such  an  ancient  Jesuine  eucharist  (revived, 
perhaps,  as  old  mysteries  were  apt  to  be  among  the 
Jews,  no  less  than  among  other  ancient  peoples,  in 
times  of  national  disaster)  a  new  meaning  may  have 
been  found  in  the  story  of  an  actually  slain  man 
Jesus,  whose  death  took  a  sacrificial  aspect  from  its 


24  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

occurrence  at  the  time  of  the  atoning  feast.  In  the 
earliest  teaching,  certainly,  Jesus  is  not  a  God ;  he 
is  merely  the  Jewish  God's  "holy  servant."  The 
eating  of  his  symbolic  body  and  blood,  however,  was 
on  a  par  with  the  rituals  in  which  Pagans  mystically 
partook  of  their  deities,  and  it  thus  lay  in  the  nature 
of  the  eucharist  that  he  should  become  divine  if  he 
were  not  so  originally.  The  expression  "  Son  of 
God,"  once  of  common  application,  would  in  his  case 
come  to  have  a  special  force,  in  terms  of  the  ancient 
Semitic  doctrine  that  the  great  God  Kronos  or  Saturn 
or  El  had  sacrificed  his  "  only  begotten  Son." 
Abraham  undertakes  to  do  the  same  thing  in  the 
legend  in  Genesis ;  and  Abraham  and  Isaac  were 
presumptively  ancient  deities.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  evolution  of  a  fabulous  hero  from  man  to  demi- 
god, and  thence  to  a  status  among  the  highest  Gods, 
is  a  common  phenomenon  in  the  ancient  religions — 
Herakles  and  Dionysos  being  typical  cases — and 
among  the  recognised  Syrian  worships  there  was 
already  one  of  a  Thcandrios  or  God-man.  Even  for  the 
Jews  the  name  Jehovah  was  applicable  to  the  Messiah. 
It  lay,  too,  in  the  nature  of  the  religious  instinct  that 
the  man-like  and  man-loving  God  should  gradually 
take  the  foremost  place  in  a  cult  in  which  he  was  at 
first  subordinate,  as  happened  in  the  worships  of 
Dionysos,  Mithra,  Herakles,  and  Krishna.  Some  such 
tendency  is  seen  in  the  worship  of  demigods  among 
the  earlier  Hebrews  (Deut.  xxxii.  17;  Hcb.). 

It  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  the  Christian 
cult  arose  solely  by  way  of  a  mystic  sacrament.  There 
may  have  been  a  blending  of  the  usage  of  quasi-com- 
memorative banquets,  the  simpler  Agap<e  or  love-feasts 
of  antiquity, with  that  of  a  special  "mystery"  ;  and  in 


PBIMABY  FORMS  OF  THE  CULT.  25 

the  case  of  the  latter  there  may  have  been  many 
varieties,  as  there  were  later  in  the  matter  of  liturgies. 
The  humhle  Corinthian  banquets  appear  to  have 
combined  the  features  of  Agapce  and  Eucliaristia,  and 
in  the  former  aspect  they  were  anything  but  solemn ; 
some  of  the  members  sleeping,  some  drinking  too 
much — a  pathetic  picture  of  the  dim  yearning  for 
communion  among  a  heavy-laden  caste.  But  the 
nature  of  the  eucharist  proper,  the  claim  to  present 
an  immortal  "body  and  blood"  for  regenerative 
eating  and  drinking,  involved  a  striving  after  sacro- 
sanctity;  and  as  soon  as  a  regular  ministrant  was 
appointed  by  any  group  he  would  tend  to  develop 
into  a  priest  of  the  Christist  mysteries,  magnifying  his 
office. 

The  great  feature  of  the  Jewish  Feast  of  the  Pass- 
over being  the  eating  of  a  lamb  "  before  the  Lord," 
that  usage  would  in  Jewish  circles  be  preferred  to,  or 
at  least  combined  with,  the  sacrament  of  bread  and 
wine,  "  Ceres  and  Bacchus,"  which  was  perhaps 
commonest  among  the  Gentiles.  In  the  legend  of 
Abraham  and  Melchisedek,  priest  of  the  Phoenician 
God  El  Ely  on,  there  figures  a  sacramental  meal  of 
bread  and  wine  (Gen.  xiv.  18)  ;  and  in  the  non- 
canonical  book  Ecclesiasticus  there  is  a  passage  (1. 15) 
which  suggests  a  use  of  wine  as  symbolical  of  blood. 
The  "  shew-bread,"  too,  seems  to  have  had  a  measure 
of  sacramental  significance.  But  while  such  a  rite 
would  seem  to  have  flourished  in  the  background  of 
Judaism,  that  of  the  Passover  was  one  of  the  great 
usages  of  the  Jewish  world  ;  and  the  first  Jesuists 
clearly  held  by  it.  It  is  indeed  one  of  the  hierological 
probabilities  that  the  paschal  lamb  was  anciently 
"  Jeschu  "  or  Jesus,  the  springtide  symbol  of  a  Sun- 


26  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

God  so  named  ;  for  in  the  book  of  Revelation,  which 
is  markedly  Judaic,  "  the  Lamb "  figures  as  the 
known  symbol  or  mystic  name  of  a  Son  of  God  "  slain 
from  the  founding  of  the  world,"  and  identified  with  a 
mystic  Jesus  who  is  one  with  Jehovah — this  long  before 
the  Christian  cult  in  general  had  arrived  at  such  a 
doctrine.  There  is  a  mythological  presumption  that 
such  language  had  reference  to  the  fact — dwelt  on  by 
later  Jewish  writers — that  the  date  of  the  Passover 
fell  at  the  entrance  of  the  sun  into  the  constellation 
Aries  in  the  zodiac ;  and  the  rule  that  the  paschal 
lamb  must  be  roasted,  not  boiled,  tells  also  of  the  sun 
myth.  Yet  again,  the  lamb  is  the  animal  latterly 
substituted  in  the  myth  of  Abraham  and  Isaac  for  the 
sacrificed  only-begotten  son  Isaac,  whose  name  in  the 
Hebrew  (Yischak)  comes  near  to  the  common  form  of 
the  name  Jesus  (Yeschu),  and  who  is  mythologically 
identifiable  as  a  Sun-God.  In  any  case,  "  the  Lamb 
slain  for  us  "  in  the  Apocalypse  implies  a  recognised 
sacrament  of  lamb-eating,  such  as  that  of  the  Pass- 
over, which  was  anciently  the  time  for  sacrificing  first- 
born sons  (Ex.  xxii.  29),  and  which  is  explained  even 
in  the  priestly  myth  as  a  commemoration  of  the 
sparing  of  the  first-born  of  Israel  when  the  first-born 
of  Egypt  were  divinely  destroyed.  To  such  a  national 
precedent  the  Hebrew  Jesuists  would  tend  to  cling  as 
they  did  to  the  practice  of  circumcision. 

But  mere  poverty  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the 
other  the  then  common  ascetic  instinct  (which  in  some 
cases  put  water  for  wine),  would  tell  among  Gentiles 
against  the  eating  of  actual  flesh  even  when  the 
pretence  was  to  eat  flesh  and  drink  blood.  In  some 
early  Christian  groups  accordingly  the  sacrificial  food 
took  the  shape  of  a  model  of  a  lamb  in  bread  (a  kind 


PBIMARY  FORMS  OF  THE  CULT.  27 

of  device  often  resorted  to  in  pagan  worship  with  a 
special  form  of  animal  sacrifice),  while  others  actually 
ate  a  lamb  and  drank  its  blood,  as  did  some  of  the 
Mithraists  and  some  of  the  Egyptian  worshippers  of 
Ammon.  The  Pauline  phrase,  "  Our  Passover  also 
has  been  sacrificed,  Christ" — which  may  or  may 
not  be  an  interpolation — would  square  with  either 
practice  ;  but  that  Jews  who  had  been  wont  to  make 
much  of  a  paschal  lamb,  and  who  held  Jesus  to  have 
represented  that  lamb,  should  pass  at  once  to  a  sacred 
meal  of  simple  bread  and  wine  or  water,  is  unlikely  ; 
and  the  gospels  themselves  indicate  that  a  dish  of 
another  kind  preceded  the  bread  and  wine  formality 
in  the  traditional  Supper. 

Light  is  thrown  on  the  original  nature  of  the  Jesuist 
rite  by  the  Paschal  controversy  in  which  the  Eastern 
and  Western  churches  are  found  embroiled  towards 
the  end  of  the  second  century.  It  turned  nominally 
on  the  different  accounts  of  the  crucifixion  in  the 
synoptics  and  the  fourth  gospel.  Whereas  the 
synoptics  make  Jesus  take  the  Passover  with  his 
disciples  in  due  course,  and  die  on  the  cross  on  the 
first  day  (the  Jewish  day  being  reckoned  from  evening 
to  evening) ,  the  fourth  gospel  makes  him  sup  informally 
with  his  disciples  on  the  day  before  the  Passover,  and 
die  at  the  very  hour  of  the  paschal  meal.  The  idea 
obviously  is  that  implied  in  the  Pauline  phrase  already 
quoted — that  he  is  henceforth  the  substitute  for 
the  lamb  ;  and  in  actual  fact  the  Eastern  Christians 
of  the  second  century  are  found  breaking  their  Easter 
fast  on  the  Passover  day,  while  the  Westerns  did  not 
break  it  till  the  Sunday  of  the  resurrection.  Evidently 
the  Eastern  Christians  had  all  along  preserved  an  im- 
memorial usage  of  eating  their  eucharist  on  the 


28  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

Passover.  They  did  not  do  this  as  orthodox  Jews,  for  they 
called  their  meal  one  of  "  salvation  "  in  a  Christist 
sense,  and  their  opponents  did  not  charge  them  with 
Judaizing ;  but  they  argued  that  they  must  take  the 
eucharist  at  the  time  at  which  Jesus  took  it  with  his 
disciples  ;  while  the  Westerns  contended  that  the  time 
for  rejoicing  and  commemoration  was  the  day  of 
resurrection.  The  explanation  is  that  the  story  of 
Jesus  eating  with  his  disciples  is  a  myth  of  the  kind 
always  framed  to  account  for  an  ancient  ritual 
practice ;  that  the  Jewish  circumstances  naturally 
gave  the  story  a  form  which  made  Jesus  obey  a  Judaic 
ordinance ;  and  that  the  Westerns,  coming  newly  into 
the  cult,  either  recoiled  from  the  procedure  of  a 
banquet  on  the  very  eve  of  the  Lord's  betrayal,  or 
followed  an  Adonisian  or  Attisian  usage,  in  which  the 
original  sacrificial  banquet,  though  perhaps  not  aban- 
doned, had  been  overshadowed  by  the  "  love  feast" 
on  the  announcement  that  "  the  Lord  has  arisen." 

In  the  nature  of  the  case,  the  controversy  was 
insoluble  by  argument.  The  Easterns  had  always 
taken  the  Holy  Supper  at  the  time  of  the  Passover, 
and  they  had  the  gospel  story  telling  them  to  repeat  it 
"  in  remembrance  "  of  the  Lord  who  so  supped  at 
the  Passover.  The  Westerns  had  the  fourth  gospel 
as  their  evidence  that  Jesus  actually  died  at  the  time 
of  the  Passover,  thus  constituting  a  universal  sub- 
stitute for  the  Jewish  sacrifice ;  and  as  in  this  gospel 
there  is  no  use  of  bread  and  wine,  but  merely  the 
nondescript  meal  which  precedes  the  ritual  in  the 
synoptics,  and  in  which  the  only  symbolic  act  is  the 
giving  of  a  "  sop"  to  the  betrayer,  they  were  left  to 
practise  the  traditional  eucharist  in  the  way  most  con- 
formable to  their  feelings  or  to  their  pre-Christian 


PBIMAKY  FORMS  OF  THE  CULT.  29 

usages.  All  theory  was  finally  lost  sight  of  in  the 
historic  church,  with  its  daily  celebration  of  the 
"  mass,"  which  is  the  annual  sacrifice  turned  into  a 
weekly  and  daily  one ;  but  from  the  whole  discussion 
there  emerges  the  fact  that  the  sacrifice  is  the  oldest 
element  in  the  cult,  antedating  its  biographical  myths. 
And  as  the  symbolic  eating  of  bread  and  wine  as  "  body 
and  blood  "  in  the  pagan  cults  is  a  late  refinement  on 
a  grosser  practice  of  primitive  sacrifice,  so  it  was  in 
the  Christist.  As  the  wafer  in  the  Catholic  ritual  is 
the  attenuated  symbol  of  the  bread  of  the  mystic 
supper,  so  that  bread  was  in  turn  an  attenuated 
symbol  of  an  earlier  object. 

When  Christianity  comes  into  aggressive  com- 
petition with  Paganism,  one  of  the  common  charges 
of  its  Roman  enemies  is  found  to  be  that  the 
Christians  were  wont  to  eat  ttte  body  of  an  actual 
child  in  their  mysteries.  There  is  no  good  reason  to 
believe  that  this  horror  ever  happened  among  them  ; 
though  the  language  of  the  rite  tells  of  a  pre-historic 
practice  of  human  sacrifice  and  ritual  cannibalism, 
such  as  actually  took  place  among  the  early  Semites 
and  the  pre-Christian  Mexicans,  and  was  said  to  have 
been  in  use  among  the  Druids  about  the  beginning  of 
the  Christian  era ;  but  it  is  probable  that  in  some 
Christist  groups  there  was  a  usage  of  eating  a  baked 
image  of  a  child,  as  had  been  done  in  the  Dionysian 
mysteries.  The  manipulation  of  the  Abraham  and 
Isaac  legend,  taken  with  other  data  in  the  Pentateuch 
and  elsewhere,  makes  it  clear  that  child-sacrifice  had 
been  practised  among  the  early  Hebrews  as  among 
the  Phoenicians,  and  that  the  sacrifice  of  a  lamb  or 
kid  became  the  equivalent,  as  it  was  perhaps  the 
prototype.  When  it  was  permitted  to  substitute  a 


30  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

dough  image  for  the  actual  lamb,  the  mystical 
principle  could  be  further  served  by  a  dough  image  of 
the  child  that  the  lamb  itself  typified.  Under  the 
veil  of  secrecy,  which  was  as  much  a  matter  of  course 
with  the  early  Christians  as  with  the  Pagan  initiates 
of  the  Eleusinian  and  other  mysteries,  such  variations 
of  the  cult  were  possible  to  an  indefinite  extent.  It 
was  only  when  there  grew  up  an  ecclesiastical 
organisation,  in  the  spirit  and  on  the  scale  of  the 
imperial  system  itself,  and  when  the  compiled  gospels 
had  become  a  recognised  code  for  the  Church  in 
general,  that  they  were  reduced  to  the  norm  of  the 
pagan  sacrament  of  bread  and  wine. 

The  only  other  primary  Christian  rite,  that  of 
baptism,  is  shown  even  in  the  gospels  to  have  been 
pre-Christian  ;  and  the  anti-Judaic  John  the  Baptist 
may  have  been  a  historic  figure  among  the  Jews, 
though  his  connection  with  the  Christos  is  a  myth, 
seen  in  the  gospels  in  different  stages  of  its  develop- 
ment. The  presumption  is  that  it  was  framed  at  the 
stage  at  which  the  Jewish  Christists,  faced  by  the 
Pauline  and  Gentile  opposition  to  circumcision, 
hitherto  held  binding  among  the  Jesuists,  decided  to 
substitute  baptism  (which  already  had  a  Jewish 
vogue)  and  thereby  maintain  a  Jewish  primacy.  But 
baptism  too  was  a  common  Gentile  usage,  as  was  the  use 
of  holy  water,  later  adopted  by  the  Christian  Church. 

With  these  Christist  rites,  it  is  clear,  there  was 
originally  associated  a  fixed  belief  in  the  speedily- 
approaching  end  of  the  world,  that  being  the  notion 
which  most  completely  pervades  every  book  in  the 
New  Testament.  The  rites  then,  like  the  similar 
mysteries  of  the  Pagans,  were  regarded  as  the  way  of 
entrance  into  the  future  life,  whether  that  were 


PRIMARY  FORMS  OF  THE  CULT.  31 

conceived  as  the  apparition  of  a  supernatural  new 
Jerusalem  on  earth,  or  as  a  transformed  existence  in  a 
material  heaven  in  the  skies.  For  the  Pauline  period, 
the  approaching  catastrophe  was  evidently  the  supreme 
pre-occupation  ;  and  to  the  fear  of  it  the  whole  of  the 
early  Christian  propaganda  appealed.  There  is  no 
reason,  however,  to  believe  that  the  Christians  at 
Jerusalem  ever  "  had  all  things  in  common,"  as  is 
asserted  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  where  other 
passages  confute  the  claim.  Such  communities  indeed 
had  frequently  arisen  in  antiquity,  and  there  was  a 
kindred  tradition  that  Pythagoras  had  centuries 
before,  in  Italy,  converted  by  one  discourse  a  multi- 
tude of  hearers,  who  adopted  a  communal  life.  But 
the  narrative  in  the  Acts,  especially  as  regards  the 
fable  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira,  seems  to  have  been 
framed  in  the  interest  of  some  of  the  Christian  com- 
munist groups  which  arose  long  after  the  period  in 
question,  and  whose  promoters  needed  at  once  an 
apostolic  precedent  for  their  ideal  and  a  menace 
against  those  who  temporised  with  it.  In  the  Pauline 
epistles  the  Gentile  converts,  so  far  from  cultivating 
community  of  goods,  are  seen  going  to  law  with  each 
other  before  heathen  judges. 

It  is  probable  that  the  use  of  the  sign  of  the  cross, 
as  a  mark  of  membership  and  a  symbol  of  salvation, 
belonged  to  the  earliest  stages  of  the  cult;  at  least 
the  sign  in  question  figures  as  the  mark  of  a  body  of 
religious  enthusiasts  in  Jewry  as  early  as  the  Book 
of  Ezekiel  (ix.  4  ;  Hel>.) ;  and  in  the  Apocalypse 
(vii.  2,  3)  the  "  seal  of  the  living  God  "  appears  to 
have  been  understood  in  the  same  sense  as  the  sign 
prescribed  by  the  prophet.  The  Hebrew  letter  tau, 
there  specified,  is  known  to  have  represented  at 


32  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

different  periods  different  forms  of  cross  ;  and  the 
oldest  of  all  is  believed  to  have  been  the  crux  ansata 
of  the  Egyptians,  which  was  a  hieroglyph  of  im- 
mortal life.  Thus  the  historic  form  of  the  crucifix 
was  determined,  not  by  the  actual  manner  of  normal 
crucifixion  (for  in  that  the  arms  were  drawn  above  the 
head  and  not  outspread),  but  by  previous  symbolism. 
In  the  Egyptian  ritual  of  Osiris  a  spreading  of  the 
arms  on  the  cross  was  in  remote  antiquity  a  form  of 
mystic  regeneration  ;  and  in  some  amulets  the  stawos 
or  tree-cross  of  Osiris  is  found  represented  with  human 
arms. 

§  6.  Rise  of  Gentile  Christism. 

A  severance  between  the  Jewish  and  the  Gentile 
Christists  was  the  necessary  condition  of  any  wide 
spread  of  the  cult.  Though  it  was  the  success  of 
Jewish  proselytism  that  paved  the  way  for  the  propa- 
ganda of  Christism,  only  a  minority  of  Gentiles 
would  willingly  bow  to  the  Jewish  pretension  of 
holding  all  the  sources  of  "  salvation."  That  a 
Grecised  Jew,  as  Paul  is  represented  to  have  been, 
should  begin  to  make  the  cult  cosmopolitan,  in  despite 
of  opposition  from  Jerusalem,  is  likely  enough  ;  and 
continued  opposition  would  only  deepen  the  breach. 
The  Judaic  claim  involved  a  financial  interest;  and 
as  local  economic  interest  was  a  factor  in  the  develop- 
ment of  every  Gentile  group  of  Christists,  a  theological 
argument  for  Gentile  independence  was  sure  to  be 
evolved.  As  the  composition  of  the  Christ-myth 
proceeded,  accordingly,  various  episodes  to  the  dis- 
credit of  the  mythic  twelve  disciples  of  Jesus  are 
framed  :  "  one  of  the  twelve  "  figures  as  the  betrayer  ; 


RISE  OF  GENTILE  CHRISTISM.  33 

Peter  openly  denies  his  Master,  and  the  others  for- 
sake him  in  a  body  in  the  hour  of  trial ;  while  their 
incapacity  to  understand  him  in  life  is  often  insisted 
on.  John  the  Baptist  and  Jesus,  again,  are  made 
explicitly  to  teach  that  the  "  Kingdom  of  God  "  is 
taken  away  from  the  Jews,  though  Jesus  also  promises 
the  twelve  that  they  shall  sit  on  twelve  thrones  judging 
the  twelve  tribes.  Finally,  there  is  a  manipulation  of 
narratives  on  the  question  of  the  responsibility  for 
Jesus'  execution,  the  outcome  being  that  it  lies 
neither  with  the  Roman  governor  nor  with  the  sub- 
Roman  king,  but  with  the  Jewish  priests  and  people. 
In  all  likelihood  most  of  those  episodes  were  first  set 
forth  in  a  Gentile  Passion-play,  whence  they  passed  into 
the  common  stream  of  tradition  ;  but  such  an  item  as 
the  part  played  by  Pilate  is  likely  to  have  been  first 
introduced  from  the  Jewish  side,  Pilate  having  been 
an  object  of  special  Jewish  detestation. 

In  such  matters  the  literary  or  myth-making 
faculty  of  the  Gentiles,  with  their  many  Saviour- 
Gods,  gave  them  the  advantage  over  the  Judaists  ;  but 
the  strife  of  the  two  interests  was  long  and  bitter. 
It  flames  out  in  the  Judaic  book  of  Revelation,  in  the 
allusion  to  those  who  "  say  they  are  apostles  and  are 
not "  ;  and  long  after  the  time  allotted  to  Paul  we 
find  him  caricatured  in  certain  Judaising  writings, 
the  so-called  Clementine  Recognitions  and  Homilies, 
in  the  person  of  Simon  Magus,  an  entirely  un- 
historical  personage,  who  also  appears  in  the  Acts  of 
the  Apostles.  Simon  Magus  is,  in  fact,  a  mythical 
figure  evolved  from  Semo  Megas  or  Great  Sem  (  = 
Sem-on,  as  Samson  is  Samas-on),an  old  Semitic  Sun- 
God  worshipped  by  the  polytheists  of  Samaria,  and 
in  connection  with  whose  cultus  there  was  evidently 

D 


34  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

a  Gentile  Christist  movement,  of  a  Gnostic  or  mythical 
character,  its  Christ  being  conceived  as  non-human. 
Such  a  movement  being  competitive  with  that  of  the 
Jewish  Jesus,  "  Simon,"  to  whom  was  ascribed  an 
impressive  Gnostic  treatise,  became  the  type  of  anti- 
Jewish  heresy  ;  whence  the  late  Christian  story  in  the 
Acts,  where  Ely  mas  again  (=  Great  El)  is  a  mythical 
duplication  of  Simon. 

There  are  many  signs  that  Samaritan  elements 
entered  early  into  the  Christist  movement.  The 
fourth  gospel  even  represents  the  founder  to  have 
been  accepted  in  Samaria  as  the  Messiah  ;  and  in  so 
far  as  the  cult  became  Gentilised,  even  if  the  Ebionites 
did  not  stand  for  an  ancient  local  and  quasi- Samaritan 
foundation,  Samaritans  would  be  the  more  ready  to 
join  it,  since  they  were  thereby  helping  to  discomfit 
the  more  exclusive  Jews.  But  they  too  had  their 
Christ-myth  ;  and  the  conception  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
as  a  dove  came  from  them  to  the  Christians.  Seeking 
to  found  finally  on  the  Old  Testament,  the  scripture- 
makers  of  the  latter  movement  had  to  explain  away 
their  Samaritan  antecedents  by  myths  of  heresy. 

The  book  of  Acts  as  a  whole,  however,  stands  for 
an  ecclesiastical  tendency  in  the  second  century  to 
make  out  that  the  first  apostles  had  not  been  divided ; 
that  Peter  too  was  a  preacher  of  Gentile  Christism, 
to  which  he  had  been  converted  by  a  vision  ;  and  that 
Paul,  in  turn,  had  made  concessions  to  Judaism. 
When  the  Judaic  Church  became  less  and  less 
dangerous  as  a  possible  monopolist,  the  organising 
Gentile  churches  could  thus  proceed  to  construct  a 
theoretic  connection  between  Christianity  and  Juda- 
ism, the  "  new  dispensation "  and  the  old,  thus 
preserving  for  the  new  creed  the  prestige  of  the  Old 


RISE  OF  GENTILE  CHRISTISM.  35 

Testament,  with  which,  as  a  body  of  sacred  books,  the 
New  could  not  for  a  long  time  compete,  even  in  the 
eyes  of  its  devotees.  At  the  same  time  the  apostles, 
who  had  long  figured  as  church -founders,  were 
effectively  glorified  as  wonder-workers,  being  credited 
with  miracles  which  rivalled  those  of  the  Christos 
himself ;  and  Peter  raises  a  "  Tabitha  "  from  the  dead 
as  Jesus  had  done  the  "  Talitha  "  or  maiden  in  the 
gospels — a  myth  which  was  itself  a  duplicate  of  a 
traditional  pagan  miracle  later  credited  to  Apollonius 
of  Tyana. 

Alongside,  however,  of  the  systematising  or  centri- 
petal process  there  went  on  a  centrifugal  one,  the 
process  of  innovating  Gentile  heresy.  Already  in 
Paul's  epistles  we  read  of  "  another  Jesus  "  whom  the 
apostle  "  had  not  preached " ;  and  in  the  second 
century  a  dozen  "  Gnostic "  heresies  were  honey- 
combing the  movement.  Their  basis  or  inspiration 
was  the  mystic  claim  to  inner  light,  "  gnosis  "  or 
knowledge,  disparaged  in  the  Pauline  phrase  about 
"  knowledge  [or  science]  falsely  so-called."  It  was  in 
nearly  all  cases  a  combination  of  ideas  current  in  the 
theosophies  of  Asia  and  Egypt  with  the  God-names  of 
the  Judaic  and  Christian  cults.  So  powerful  was  the 
instinct  of  independence,  then  as  in  later  periods  of 
political  change,  that  the  spirit  of  Gnosticism,  in  a 
Judaic  form,  found  its  way  into  the  expanding 
gospels,  where  Jesus  is  at  times  made  to  pose  as  the 
holder  of  a  mystical  knowledge,  denied  to  the 
capacities  of  the  multitude,  but  conveyed  by  him  to 
his  disciples ;  who,  however,  are  in  other  passages 
reduced  to  the  popular  level  of  spiritual  incapacity. 
It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  ferment  thus  promoted 
by  what  the  systematisers  denounced  as  heresy  helped 


36  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

at  first  to  spread  the  cult,  at  least  in  name,  since  all 
Christists  alike  would  tend  to  resort  to  the  eucharist, 
or  to  the  assemblies  which  were  to  develop  into 
Churches. 

At  first  the  Jewish  Christists  may  wrell  have  shared 
in  the  ordinary  Jewish  detestation  of  the  Roman 
tyranny  ;  and  for  them  Nero  may  have  been  "  anti- 
christ," as  he  appears  to  be  in  the  Apocalypse ;  but 
there  is  no  good  reason  to  suppose  that  in  Nero's  day 
the  Christians  in  Rome  were  a  perceptible  quantity. 
Martyr-making  later  became  an  ecclesiastical  industry ; 
and  the  striking  passage  in  Tacitus  which  alleges  the 
torture  and  destruction  of  a  "  vast  multitude"  of 
Christians  at  Nero's  hands  is  nowhere  cited  in 
Christian  literature  till  after  the  printing,  under 
suspicious  circumstances,  of  the  Annals.  No  hint  of 
such  a  catastrophe  is  given  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles. 
An  equivalent  statement  to  that  of  Tacitus  is  first 
found  in  the  chronicle  of  Sulpicius  Severus  in  the  fifth 
century,  where  it  is  an  expanded  episode  in  the  midst 
of  an  extremely  curt  epitome.  The  similarly  suspicious 
passage  on  the  same  subject  in  Suetonius  is  put  in 
further  perplexity  by  the  same  writer's  statement  that 
in  the  reign  of  Claudius  the  Jews  in  Rome  were  con- 
stantly rioting,  "  Chrestus  stirring  them  up  " — an 
expression  which  suggests,  if  anything,  that  there  was 
on  foot  in  Rome  a  common  Jewish  movement  of 
Messianic  aspiration,  in  which  the  Christ  was  simply 
expected  as  a  deliverer,  apart  from  any  such  special 
cult  as  that  of  Jesus.  It  is  quite  inapplicable  to  any 
such  movement  as  is  set  forth  in  the  Pauline  Epistles. 
In  any  case,  after  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  Jesuist  hopes 
were  visibly  confined  to  the  religious  sphere  ;  and 
Gentile  Christianity  above  all  was  perforce  resigned  to 


RISE  OF  GENTILE  CHBISTISM.  37 

the  imperial  system,  of  which  it  was  one  day  to  become 
a  limb. 

There  is  seen,  too,  even  on  the  face  of  the  Pauline 
epistles,  a  superimposing  of  new  Greek  terms  and 
concepts  on  the  vocabulary  of  Jewish  theology,  terms 
of  metaphysic  and  religion  such  as  immortality,  con- 
science,  providence,  natural,  corruptible,  invisible — and 
in  the  language  of  the  gospels  and  the  Acts  the  Grecising 
influence  becomes  more  and  more  marked,  increasing 
in  the  Acts  and  in  the  third  gospel,  and  becoming  para- 
mount in  the  fourth.  The  very  conception  of  religious 
as  distinct  from  temporal  salvation  is  Hellenistic  or 
Persian  rather  than  Judaic  ;  and  the  title  of  Saviour, 
which  becomes  the  special  epithet  of  the  Christ,  is 
constituted  as  much  by  Pagan  usage  as  by  the  original 
significance  of  the  name  Jesus.  Gentile  also,  rather 
than  Judaic — though  common  to  the  pre- Judaic 
Semites  and  the  idolaters  among  the  Hebrews — was 
the  idea  expressed  in  the  Pauline  epistles  that  the 
Christist  who  partakes  of  the  mystic  rite  suffers  with 
and  henceforth  is  one  with  the  slain  demigod,  being 
"  crucified  with  Christ."  That  conception  is  prece- 
dented  generally  in  all  the  cults  of  ritual  mourning, 
and  particularly  in  that  of  Attis,  in  which  the  wor- 
shippers gashed  themselves  and  punctured  their  hands 
or  necks ;  some  of  the  priests  even  mutilating  them- 
selves as  the  God  was  mutilated  in  the  myth.  The 
Pauline  expression  is  to  be  understood  in  the  light  of 
the  passage  in  which  a  bitter  censure,  for  having  taken 
up  a  false  Christism,  is  passed  on  the  Galatians, 
"  before  whose  eyes  Christ  had  been  openly  depicted, 
crucified"  (cp.  1  Cor.  xi.  26,  Gr.  and  A.Y.).  In 
some  but  not  in  all  MSS.  are  added  the  words  "among 
you,"  words  which  may  either  have  been  omitted  by 


38  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

late  transcribers  whom   they  embarrassed,  or  added 
by  some   one   desirous   of   accentuating   the   already 
emphatic    expression    of    the    original.      When    we 
connect  with  these  the  further  passage,  usually  taken 
also  without  inquiry  as  purely  metaphorical,  in  which 
Paul  says  he  "  bears  branded  on  his  body  the  marks 
of  Jesus,"  we  find  reason  to  surmise  that,  even  as  the 
ministrant  in  the  Dionysian  college  was  called  by  the 
God's    name,   Bacchus ;    as    the  Osirian   worshipper 
spread   himself  on  the  cross  and   became  one  with 
Osiris ;  and  as  the  priest  of  Attis  personated  Attis  in 
his  mysteries,  so  Paul  or  another  personated  Jesus  in 
the  mysteries  of   his  sect ;    that   what  has  so  long 
passed   for  verbal   metaphor   stood   originally   for   a 
process  of  acted  symbolism ;  and  that  the  theory  of 
the  mystery  was  that  he  who  personated  the  crucified 
demigod  became  specially  assimilated  to  him.     The 
Pauline  language  on  this  head  coincides  exactly  with 
the   general  and   primordial  theory  of   theanthropic 
sacrifice :  "  I  have  been  crucified  with  Christ,  and  it 
is  no  longer  I  that  live,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me." 
Obscure  and  violent  if  understood  as  sheer  metaphor, 
such   expressions   fall   into  line   with   much   ancient 
religious  belief  when  read  as  describing  a  symbolic 
rite. 

In  any  case,  the  first-cited  passage  seems  to  tell  of  a 
dramatic  or  an  artistic  representation  of  the  crucified 
Christ  in  connection  with  the  sacrament ;  a  procedure 
which  would  probably  not  be  favoured  by  the  art- 
hating  Jews,  but  which,  gradually  developed  among 
the  Gentiles  in  the  fashion  of  the  drama-loving  Greeks, 
is  the  probable  origin  of  many  of  the  gospel  narra- 
tives. It  belonged  to  the  conception  of  all  such 
mysteries  that  their  details  should  never  be  divulged 


RISE  OF  GENTILE  CHRISTISM.  39 

to  outsiders  ;  hence  the  rarity  of  such  allusions,  even 
in  letters  to  the  faithful.  The  Christian  cult  adopted 
the  very  terms  of  the  heathen  practice,  and  its 
initiates  were  called  mystic,  like  those  of  all  the  rival 
religions. 

A  study  of  the  early  Christian  tombs  shows  how 
much  of  more  or  less  unconscious  compromise  took 
place  wherever  Christism  made  converts.  The 
charming  myth  of  Psyche  had  become  for  Pagans  a 
doctrine  of  immortality ;  and  in  that  sense  the  figure 
of  the  child-goddess  was  without  misgiving  carved  on 
early  Christian  tombs.  So  with  the  figure  of  Hermes 
Kriophoros,  Hermes  the  Ram-Bearer,  who  is  the  true 
original  of  the  Christian  conception  of  the  Good 
Shepherd,  in  art  and  in  thought,  though  a  figure  of 
Apollo  in  the  same  capacity  may  have  been  the 
medium  of  conveyance.  Orpheus  was  assimilated  in 
the  same  fashion  ;  and  when  art  began  to  be  applied 
to  the  needs  of  the  new  cult,  Jesus  was  commonly 
figured  as  a  beardless  youth,  like  the  popular  deities 
of  the  Pagans  in  general. 

Last  but  not  least  of  the  Gentile  elements  which 
determined  the  spread  of  the  Christist  cult  was  the 
double  meaning  attaching  to  the  Greek  form  of  the 
Messianic  name.  In  the  unplausible  passage  above 
cited  from  Suetonius,  that  is  spelt  Chrc'stos,  evidently 
after  the  Greek  word  Chrestos= "  good,  excellent, 
gracious,"  which  occurs  frequently  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  which  was  a  special  title  of  the  "  infernal  " 
or  underworld  Gods  of  the  Samothracian  mysteries, 
also  of  Hermes,  of  Osiris,  and  of  Isis.  The  two  words 
were  pronounced  alike  ;  and  the  coincidence  is  often 
such  as  would  be  made  much  of  by  ancient  thinkers, 
wont  to  lay  great  stress  on  words.  In  the  gospel 


40  PKIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

phrase  so  loosely  rendered  "my  yoke  is  easy"  the 
Greek  adjective  is  chrestos ;  in  the  epistles  chrestotes  is 
the  word  used  in  the  phrase  "  the  goodness  of  God  "  ; 
and  in  the  familiar  Pauline  quotation  from  Menander 
"  good  manners "  is  in  the  Greek  chrcsta  cthe. 
Among  the  Pagans,  again,  this  epithet  constantly 
figured  on  the  kind  of  tomb  called  her  don,  erected  to 
distinguished  persons  who  thus  received  the  status  of 
inferior  deities  or  demigods,  and  who  in  consequence 
of  this  very  epigraphic  formula  came  in  later  times  to 
be  regarded  as  Christian  martyrs,  and  to  be  so  cele- 
brated in  festivals  which  were  really  continuations  of 
the  pagan  feasts  in  their  honour.  The  Christians 
themselves,  on  the  other  hand,  habitually  wrote  their 
founder's  name  Chrestos  or  Chreistns  on  their  tombs 
in  the  second  and  third  centuries,  thus  assimilating  it 
to  the  pagan  epigraphic  formula  chreste  chair e ;  and 
the  term  Christian  frequently  followed  the  same 
spelling.  Several  of  the  Fathers,  indeed,  make  play 
with  the  double  spelling,  claiming  that  the  terms  are 
for  them  correlative.  So  fixed  was  the  double  usage 
that  to  this  day  the  spelling  of  the  French  word 
chretien  preserves  the  trace.  There  was  thus  on  the 
Christist  side  an  appeal  to  Gentiles  on  the  lines  of  a 
name  or  badge  already  much  associated  with  Gentile 
religion,  and  attractive  to  them  in  a  way  in  which  the 
name  "  Christ"  as  signifying  "one  anointed  "  would 
not  be. 

How  far  this  attraction  operated  may  be  partly 
inferred  from  such  a  document  as  the  apologetic 
treatise  of  Theophilus  of  Antioch,  conjecturally  dated 
about  the  year  180,  in  which  there  is  not  a  single 
mention  of  Jesus  as  a  basis  of  the  Christian  creed, 
while  the  names  Christos  and  Christian  are  repeatedly 


RISE  OF  GENTILE  CHRISTISM.  41 

bracketed  with  "  chrestos."  The  writer  figures  less 
as  a  Pauline  Christist  than  as  a  Gentile  proselyte  who 
founded  on  the  Hebrew  sacred  books,  and  believed 
in  some  impersonal  Christ  at  once  "  good "  and 
"anointed."  Similarly  in  the  apology  of  Athena- 
goras,  belonging  to  the  same  period,  the  founder 
figures  purely  as  the  divine  Logos,  not  being  even 
mentioned  as  a  person  with  a  biography,  though  the 
writer  quotes  the  Logos  through  an  apocryphal 
gospel.  In  such  a  propaganda  the  Greek  associations 
with  the  epithet  Chrestos  would  count  for  much  more 
than  those  of  the  Judaic  standpoint. 

But  above  all  other  gains  on  this  score  may  be 
reckoned  those  made  in  Egypt,  where  the  cult  of  the 
cross  belonged  alike  to  the  ancient  worship  of  Osiris 
and  the  recent  one  of  Serapis.  Not  only  was  Osiris 
in  especial  chrestos,  the  benign  God,  but  the  hieroglyph 
of  goodness,  applied  to  him  in  common  with  others, 
had  the  form  of  a  cross  standing  on  a  hillock,  while 
the  cross  symbol  in  another  form  was  the  sign  of 
immortal  life.  In  the  imported  worship  of  Serapis, 
which  inevitably  conformed  in  the  main  to  that  of 
Osiris,  the  cross  was  equally  a  divine  and  mystic 
emblem.  It  thus  becomes  intelligible  that  some 
devotees  of  Serapis  should,  as  is  stated  in  the  well- 
known  letter  of  the  Emperor  Hadrian,  figure  as 
bishops  of  Christ;  and  that  Serapis  -  worshippers 
should  rank  as  Christians,  their  God  being  like  Osiris 
"  Chrestos."  To  gather  into  one  loosely-coherent 
mass  the  elements  so  variously  collected  was  the  work 
of  the  gradually-developed  hierarchical  organisation  ; 
and  the  process  involved  a  retention  of  some  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  various  worships  concerned. 
That  there  were  yet  other  sources  of  membership 


42  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

for  the  early  Church,  apart  from  direct  conversion,  is 
to  be  gathered  from  the  allegorical  writing  known  as 
the  "  Pastor  "  of  Hennas,  which  is  known  to  have 
been  one  of  the  most  popular  books  in  the  whole 
Christian  literature  of  the  second  century.  This 
work,  apparently  written  in  Italy,  never  once  mentions 
the  name  Jesus  or  the  name  Christ,  and  never  quotes 
from  any  book  in  either  Testament,  nor  alludes  to  a 
crucifixion  or  a  eucharist ;  but  speaks  of  One  God,  a 
Holy  Spirit,  and  a  Son  of  God  who  underwent  labours 
and  sufferings;  of  a  "Church"  which  appears  to 
mean  the  community  of  all  good  men ;  and  of  bishops 
and  apostles  and  presbyters.  It  is  intelligible  only 
as  standing  for  some  species  of  pre- Jesuist  propaganda 
very  loosely  related  to  Judaism,  inasmuch  as  it 
appears  to  cite  some  apocryphal  Jewish  work,  yet 
utters  no  Judaic  doctrine.  Its  sole  specified  rite  is 
baptism  ;  and  its  moral  teaching  barely  recognises  the 
idea  of  vicarious  sacrifice.  Such  a  work  must  have 
had  its  public  before  the  Jesuist  movement  took 
sectarian  or  dogmatic  form ;  and  its  popularity  in  the 
early  Church  must  have  come  of  the  inclusion  of  its 
earlier  following.  When  the  Church  attained  definite 
organisation  and  a  dogmatic  system  the  book  was 
naturally  discarded  as  having  none  of  the  specific 
qualities  of  a  Christian  document. 

A  "Church"  such  as  is  ambiguously  set  forth  in 
the  Pastor  may  conceivably  have  been  set  up  by 
one  of  the  movements  of  Samaritan  Christism  already 
mentioned,  or  by  that  connected  with  the  name  of  the 
Jew  Elxai,  who  is  recorded  to  have  written  of 
"  Christ  "  without  making  it  clear  whether  he  referred 
to  the  gospel  Jesus.  As  among  the  Elcesaites,  so 
in  the  Pastor,  Jesus  is  conceived  as  of  gigantic 


GROWTH  OF  THE  CHRIST  MYTH.  43 

stature.  On  any  view,  being  neither  Christian 
nor  anti-Christian,  but  simply  pre-Christian,  yet 
turned  to  Christian  uses,  the  book  strengthens  the 
surmise  that  a  number  of  the  so-called  heresies  of  the 
early  Church  were  in  reality  survivals  of  earlier 
movements  which  the  Church  had  absorbed,  perhaps 
during  times  of  persecution.  The  "  heresy  "  of  Simon 
Magus  was  certainly  such  a  pre-Christian  cult ;  that 
of  Dositheus  appears  to  be  in  the  same  case  ;  and  the 
ideas  of  the  Pastor  conform  to  no  canonical  version 
of  the  Christian  creed. 


§  7.  Growth  of  the  Christ  Myth. 

The  Christist  cult  gained  ground  not  because  there 
was  anything  new  either  in  its  dogma  or  in  its 
promise,  but  on  the  contrary  because  these  were  so 
closely  paralleled  in  many  Pagan  cults  :  its  growth 
was  in  fact  by  way  of  assimilation  of  new  details  from 
these.  Step  by  step  it  is  seen  to  have  adopted  the 
mysteries,  the  miracles,  and  the  myths  of  the  popular 
Gentile  religions.  The  resurrection  of  Jesus  is  made 
to  take  place  like  that  of  Mithra,  from  a  rock  tomb  ; 
and  to  the  sacred  banquet  of  twelve  represented  by 
the  last  supper  there  is  added,  in  the  fourth  gospel, 
an  episode  which  embodies  the  common  pagan  usage 
of  a  sacred  banquet  of  seven.  In  the  way  of  miracle 
the  Christ  is  made  to  turn  water  into  wine,  as 
Dionysos  had  been  immemorially  held  to  do ;  he 
walks  on  the  water  like  Poseidon  ;  like  Osiris  and 
Phoebus  Apollo  he  wields  the  scourge  ;  like  the  solar 
Dionysos,  he  rides  on  two  asses  and  feeds  multitudes 
in  the  desert ;  like  ^sculapius,  he  raises  men  from 


44  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

the  dead,  gives  sight  to  the  blind,  and  heals  the  sick  ; 
and  like  Attis  and  Adonis  he  is  mourned  over  and 
rejoiced  over  by  women.  Where  the  parallel  is  not 
exact  we  still  find  pagan  myth  giving  rise  to  Christian ; 
for  the  fable  of  the  temptation  is  but  a  new  story  told 
of  the  oft-copied  ancient  Babylonian  astronomical 
symbol  in  which  the  Goat- God  (the  sign  of  Capricorn) 
stands  beside  the  Sun-God — a  scene  turned  by  the 
Greeks  into  the  myths  of  Pan  leading  Jupiter  to  the 
mountain- top,  of  Pan  or  Marsyas  competing  with 
Apollo,  and  of  Silenus  instructing  Dionysos.  Above 
all,  the  Christ  had  to  be  born  in  the  manner  of  the 
ever-cherished  Child- God  of  the  ancient  world ;  he 
must  have  a  virgin  for  mother,  and  he  must  be 
pictured  in  swaddling-clothes  in  the  basket-manger, 
preserved  from  immemorial  antiquity  in  the  myth  of 
Ion  and  in  the  cult  of  Dionysos,  in  which  the  image 
of  the  Child-God  was  carried  in  procession  on  Christ- 
mas day.  Like  Horos  he  must  be  born  in  a  stable — 
the  stable-temple  of  the  sacred  cow,  the  symbol  of 
the  Virgin  Goddess  Isis,  queen  of  heaven ;  and  the 
apocryphal  gospels  completed  the  pagan  parallel  by 
making  the  stable  a  cave,  the  birthplace  of  Zeus  and 
Mithra  and  Dionysos  and  Adonis  and  Hermes  and 
Horos.  Prudence  excluded  the  last  detail  from  the 
canonical  gospels,  but  it  became  part  of  the  popular 
faith ;  and  the  Christ's  birthday  had  been  naively 
assimilated  by  the  populace  to  the  solstitial  birth-day 
of  the  Sun-God,  25th  December,  long  before  the 
Church  ventured  to  endorse  the  usage. 

Judaic  manipulation,  however,  was  not  lacking. 
Though  Jesus  is  born  of  a  virgin,  it  is  in  the  manner 
of  Jewish  theosophy ;  for  the  "  Spirit  of  God  "  broods 
over  Mary  as  it  had  done  on  the  germinal  deep  in 


GROWTH  OF  THE  CHRIST  MYTH. 


45 


Genesis.  Having  been  a  Jewish  Messiah  before  he 
was  a  Gentile  or  Samaritan  Christ,  Jesus  had  further 
to  satisfy  as  many  as  possible  of  the  Jewish  Messianic 
requirements.  He  must  be  of  the  line  of  David,  and 
born  at  Bethlehem  ;  but  inasmuch  as  Jewish  tradition 
expected  both  a  Messiah  Ben-David  and  a  Messiah 
Ben-Joseph — the  latter  being  apparently  a  Samaritan 
requirement — he  was  made  Ben -David  by  royal 
descent,  and  Ben-Joseph  through  his  putative  father. 
Yet  again,  there  being  Messianists  who  denied  the 
necessity  that  the  Anointed  One  should  descend  from 
David,  there  was  inserted  in  the  gospels  a  story  in 
which  Jesus  repudiates  such  descent ;  the  two  opposed 
theories  being  thus  alike  harboured,  without  discomfort 
and  without  explanation.  In  the  same  fashion  the 
ascetics  of  the  movement  made  the  Son  of  Man  poor 
and  homeless,  while  the  anti-ascetics  made  him  a 
wine-drinker,  ready  to  sit  at  meat  with  publicans  and 
sinners.  For  the  Jews,  too,  he  had  to  raise  the 
widow's  son  as  did  Elijah  and  Elisha  in  the  Old 
Testament  story — a  Hebrew  variant  of  the  Gentile 
myth  of  the  raising  of  the  dead  Attis  or  Adonis,  or  the 
dead  child  Horos  or  Dionysos,  further  reproduced  in 
the  resurrection  of  the  Christ  himself ;  and  there  had  to 
be  at  his  birth  a  massacre  of  the  innocents,  as  in  the 
myth  of  Moses  and  in  the  Arab  myths  of  the  births  of 
Abraham  and  Daniel.  Yet  again,  he  had  to  figure  in 
his  crucifixion  as  bearing  the  insignia  of  royalty,  like 
the  sacrificed  "  only  begotten  son"  of  the  Semitic 
God  El,  and  the  sacrificed  God-man  of  the  Babylonian 
feast  of  Sacaea.  It  may  be  that  Barabbas,  "  the  son 
of  the  father,"  is  a  survival  of  the  same  conception 
and  the  same  ritual  usage,  similarly  imposed  on  a 
narrative  of  which  no  part  is  historical. 


46  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

As  with  action,  so  with  theory.  In  the  East  there 
had  long  prevailed  the  mystical  dogma  that  the 
Supreme  God,  who  was  above  knowledge,  had  incar- 
nated himself  in  or  created  a  deity  representing  his 
mind  in  relation  to  men,  the  Logos  or  Word,  in  the 
sense  of  message  or  revealed  reason.  Such  was 
Mithra,  the  Mediator,  in  the  Mazdean  system,  whence 
apparently  the  conception  originated  ;  such  was 
Thoth  in  the  theosophy  of  Egypt ;  such  was  Hermes, 
son  of  Maia  and  messenger  of  the  Gods,  in  the 
pantheon  of  the  Greeks  ;  and  the  Jews  had  long  been 
assimilating  the  principle,  partly  by  making  the 
deity  figure  as  the  Logos  in  human  or  angelic  form 
(as  in  Gen.  xv.)  ;  partly  in  the  form  of  a  personalising 
of  Sophia,  wisdom,  as  in  the  books  of  Ecclesiastes 
and  Proverbs  and  in  the  Old  Testament  apocrypha ; 
partly  in  the  later  form  of  a  theoretic  doctrine  of  the 
Logos,  as  developed  on  the  basis  of  Plato  in  the 
writings  of  Philo  the  Jew  of  Alexandria,  about  the 
beginning  of  the  Christian  era.  In  the  fourth 
gospel  this  doctrine  is  summarily  imposed  on  the 
Christist  cult  in  an  advanced  form,  though  the  three 
synoptic  gospels  had  shown  no  trace  of  it.  The  new 
myth  was  welcomed  like  the  others ;  all  alike  went  to 
frame  a  deity  who  could  compare  and  compete  with 
those  of  the  other  cults  of  the  day. 

Doctrine  followed  the  same  law  of  assimilation ; 
the  Christ  must  needs  reflect  in  his  teaching  all  the 
phases  of  the  religious  thought  of  the  age,  however 
contradictory.  First  he  had  to  voice  the  Judaic  hope 
of  a  kingdom  of  heaven,  with  stress  laid  on  the 
claims  of  the  poor;  he  must  insist  on  the  speedy 
coming  of  the  Judaic  doomsday  and  on  his  own 
function  at  the  catastrophe ;  but  yet  again  he  is  made 


GROWTH  OF  THE  CHRIST  MYTH.  47 

to  present  the  kingdom    of    heaven   as   a  kind    of 
spiritual  change ;  and  last  of  all  he  is  made  to  utter 
the  wisdom  of    the    thinker  who  had  penetrated  all 
the  popular  delusions  and  seen  that  "  the  kingdom 
of   heaven  is  within   you" — or   nowhere.      In    one 
gospel  he  excludes  Samaritans  and  Gentiles  from  his 
mission  ;  in  another  he  makes  a  Samaritan  the  model 
"  neighbour "  ;    in    another    he     goes     among    the 
Samaritans  in  person.     He  becomes  as  manifold  in 
doctrine  as  is  Apollo  or  Dionysos  in  function.     Even 
when  he  is   made  to  lay  down,  as   against  Jewish 
superstition,    the     sane     principle    that    victims    of 
fatalities  are  not  to  be  reckoned  worse  sinners  than 
other  men,  a  later  hand  appends  a  tag  which  reaffirms 
the  very  superstition  impugned.     Every  variety   of 
ethic,  within  the  limits  of   the  Jewish   and  Gentile 
ideals   of    the   time,   is    imposed    on    him   in   turn. 
Alternately  particularist  and   universalist,  a  bigoted 
Jew  and  a  cosmopolitan,  a  lover  of  the  people  and  a 
Gnostic   despiser  of    their   ignorance,  a   pleader  for 
love  to  enemies  and  a  bitter  denouncer  of  opponents  ; 
successively  insisting  on  unlimited  forgiveness  and  on 
the  ostracism  of  recalcitrant  brethren,  on  the  utter 
fulfilment  of  the  Mosaic  law  and  on  its  supersession ; 
alternately  promising  and  denying  temporal  blessings, 
avowing  and  concealing  his  belief  in  his  Messiahship  ; 
prescribing  by  turns    secresy    and    publicity  to    his 
auditors,  blind  faith   and   simple  good  works  to  his 
disciples — he    is    the    heterogeneous    product   of    a 
hundred  mutally  frustrative  hands,  a  medley  of  voices 
that  never  was  and  could  not  be  in  one  personality. 
Through    his     supernatural    mask   there   speak    the 
warring  sects  and  ideals  of  three  centuries  :  wisdom 
and  delusion,  lenity  and  bitterness,  ventriloquise  in 


48  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

turns  in  his  name.  Even  as  the  many  generations 
of  Jewish  teachers  had  preluded  all  their  changing 
counsels  with  a  "  thus  saith  the  Lord,"  so  did  their 
Christist  successors  seek  to  mint  their  cherished 
dogmas,  their  rigid  prejudices,  and  their  better  in- 
spirations, with  the  image  and  superscription  of  the 
new  Logos,  the  growing  God  of  a  transforming  world. 
The  later  product  is  thus  as  unreal  as  the  older. 

It  is  only  on  presuppositions  themselves  the  fruit 
of  belief  in  the  myth  that  such  a  growth  seems 
unlikely  or  impossible,  or  that  something  super- 
normal is  needed  to  account  for  the  wide  development 
of  the  Christian  system.  Those  who  look  upon  the 
historic  flood  in  the  broad  and  peopled  plain  are  slow 
to  conceive  that  it  had  its  rise  in  the  minute  rills 
and  random  brooks  of  a  far-off  mountain  land.  But 
it  is  so  that  the  great  rivers  begin. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE    ENVIRONMENT. 

THE  artificial  organism  which  we  have  seen  beginning 
to  take  shape  is  to  be  conceived,  like  those  properly  so 
called,  as  depending  on  and  adjusting  itself  to  its 
environment.  Of  this  the  nature  has  been  partly  set 
forth  in  tracing  the  beginnings  of  the  cult,  but  it 
must  be  considered  in  itself  if  the  relation  is  to  be 
fully  understood. 

§  1.  Social  and  Mental  Conditions  in  the  Roman 
Empire. 

The  world  in  which  Christianity  grew  up  was  above 
all  things  one  of  extinguished  nationalities,  of  obliter- 
ated democracies,  of  decaying  intellectual  energy. 
Wherever  the  Roman  Empire  spread,  a  rigid  limit 
was  set  to  the  play  of  public  spirit,  whether  as 
criticism  of  the  political  order  or  as  effort  to  improve 
the  social  structure.  The  forms  of  municipal  govern- 
ment remained;  but  the  natural  and  progressive 
struggle  of  classes  and  interests  was  at  an  end.  The 
Jew  must  give  up  his  polity  of  applied  theocracy ;  the 
Greek  his  ideal  of  the  City  State  ;  even  as  the  Roman 
Senate  itself  shrank  into  an  assembly  of  sycophants, 
content  to  register  its  master's  decrees.  All  alike,  on 
pain  of  extinction,  must  mutely  or  fawningly  accept 
the  imperial  system,  and  abandon  hope  of  shaping 

49  E 


60  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

their  own  political  destinies.  In  such  a  world  the 
thinking  faculty,  denied  almost  all  exercise  on  the 
living  problems  of  polity  and  conduct,  necessarily 
turned  to  the  themes  that  were  open  to  it ;  and  as  the 
very  calibre  of  men's  minds  had  narrowed  with  the 
suppression  of  their  freedom,  which  meant  the 
curtailment  of  their  personality,  there  was  no  such 
faculty  available  as  could  grasp  the  difficult  problems 
of  science  and  philosophy  led  up  to  by  the  hardy 
speculation  of  the  ages  of  freedom  and  by  the  skilled 
specialism  of  the  endowed  students  of  pre-Roman 
Alexandria.  For  the  mass  of  the  people,  above  all, 
save  where  the  Greek  drama  was  still  presented  to 
them,  concrete  religion  was  the  one  possible  form  of 
mental  life  ;  and  for  the  more  serious  such  mental 
life  was  at  once  a  solace  and  a  preoccupation.  Under 
a  despotism  which  in  .so  many  ways  conformed  to 
oriental  types,  serious,  men  developed  something  of 
the  oriental  aloofness  from  the  actual :  from  action 
they  turned  to  brooding,  from  seen  interests  to  the 
problems  of  the  unseen.  Even  in  Eome  itself,  where 
the  upper  classes  were  much  more  indifferent  to 
Christism  than  those  of  the  Eastern  provinces,  the 
new  conditions  developed  a  new  interest  in  theological 
problems  on  the  pagan  side. 

Broadly  speaking,  types  and  classes  of  men  have 
always  been  meditatively  religious  or  reflective  in  the 
degree  of  their  exclusion  from  practical  concerns.  In 
the  ancient  world  the  law  reveals  itself  at  every  vista. 
At  one  extreme  stood  the  energetic  Romans,  sedulous 
first  in  agriculture  and  later  in  warfare  ;  superstitious 
but  unspeculative ;  making  ritual  religion  a  methodical 
province  of  polity,  a  part  of  the  mechanism  of  the 
republic:  at  the  other  the  Hindus,  predestined  to 


SOCIAL  AND  MENTAL  CONDITIONS.  51 

despotism  by  their  physical  and  economic  conditions, 
and  to  inaction  by  their  climate,  the  true  children  of 
reverie,  for  whom  religious  evolution  was  a  deepening 
absorption  in  boundless  speculation.  Midway  stood 
the  Greeks,  active  but  not  laborious,  too  alive  for 
much  brooding  and  too  cultured  for  wholly  pedantic 
superstition,  the  natural  framers  of  a  religion  of 
poetry  and  art.  Their  science  and  philosophy  began 
in  Asia  Minor,  on  the  soil  of  the  half-scientific,  half- 
religious  lore  of  the  overthrown  Assyrian  and  Baby- 
lonian cultures  of  the  past,  in  a  leisurely  and  half- 
oriental  atmosphere  ;  and  after  the  first  free  evolution 
of  its  germs  in  the  manifold  life  of  their  countless 
competitive  City  States,  the  most  notable  growth  of 
their  philosophy  was  in  the  period  when  their  political 
failure  began  to  declare  itself,  and  the  shadow  of 
despotism  was  falling  on  men  sobered  and  chagrined 
by  the  spectacle  of  ceaseless  intestine  strife.  When 
despotism  became  permanent,  thought  still  progressed 
in  virtue  of  the  acquired  stores  of  culture  and  stress 
of  impulse ;  but  in  that  air  the  higher  life  soon 
flagged,  and  philosophy  lapsed  to  the  levels  of  ancient 
mysticism,  becoming  a  play  of  fantasy  instead  of  an 
effort  of  critical  reason. 

Where  the  cultured  few  underwent  such  a  destiny, 
the  uncultured  crowd  could  but  feed  on  the  simpler 
religious  doctrine  that  came  in  their  way.  It  neces- 
sarily ran  to  a  more  intimate  employment  of  the 
standing  machinery  of  the  creeds,  to  a  use  of  the  more 
emotional  rites,  to  a  freer  participation  in  the  consola- 
tions and  excitements  of  the  dramatic  mysteries. 
Where  civic  life  was  precarious  without  being  self- 
ruling,  the  more  serious  came  more  and  more  under 
the  sway  of  the  oriental  preoccupation  over  the  future 


52  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

— a  habit  of  mind  developed  in  lands  subject  to  chronic 
conquest  and  to  the  caprice  of  tyrants  and  satraps. 
Growing  Greece,  while  free,  had  taken  from  the  East, 
centuries  before  the  Christian  era,  stimulating  and 
emotional  cults,  especially  dear  to  women,  with 
mysteries  which  promised  to  their  initiates  a  blessed 
life  beyond  the  troublous  present ;  and  by  a  natural 
tendency  those  who  had  least  share  in  controlling  the 
present  clung  most  to  such  comfort.  So,  in  republican 
Rome,  it  was  found  that  the  women  and  the  im- 
ported slaves  were  always  most  hospitable  to  a  new 
"  superstition  "  ;  and  in  times  of  dangerous  war  the 
proclivity  quickened. 

In  this  way  there  went  on  a  kind  of  religious 
enfranchisement  in  the  Mediterranean  world  both 
before  and  after  the  Romans  became  the  universal 
masters.  In  the  early  City  States  of  Greece  and 
Italy,  but  especially  in  Rome,  worship  was  originally 
in  large  measure  a  privilege  of  rank.  The  most 
constant  and  intimate  worship  was  naturally  that  of 
the  household  Gods,  the  Lares  and  Penates ;  and  the 
men  with  no  ancestral  home,  whether  slaves  or 
paupers,  were  outside  of  such  communion.  Only  in 
the  worship  of  the  Gods  of  the  city  was  there  general 
communion  ;  and  even  here  the  patrician  orders  long 
monopolised  the  offices  of  ministry  in  Rome ;  while 
even  in  more  democratic  Greece,  with  some  excep- 
tions, the  slaves  and  the  foreign  residents  were 
excluded  from  the  sacred  banquet  which  was  the 
mark  of  all  cults  alike,  public  or  private.  Even  the 
first  imported  cults  were  put  under  a  civic  control, 
which  doubtless  promoted  decorum,  but  also  made  for 
class  interests.  In  later  republican  Rome  the  usage 
prevailed  of  bringing  to  the  sacred  banquet-table  the 


SOCIAL  AND  MENTAL  CONDITIONS.  53 

statues  of  the  Gods,  who  were  believed  to  partake  with 
the  worshippers ;  and  the  company  was  naturally 
kept  very  select.  For  the  Roman  common  people, 
accordingly,  religious  association  was  mainly  confined 
to  the  worship  of  the  public  Lares  and  Penates  insti- 
tuted for  their  benefit.  In  Greece  the  city  banquet 
was  liberalised  with  the  progress  of  democracy ;  but 
at  best  it  was  the  heritage  of  the  free  citizens ;  and 
the  antique  simplicity  of  its  rites  must  have  made  it 
lack  emotional  atmosphere.  At  times  it  was  even 
necessary  to  practise  compulsion  to  secure  the  due 
attendance  of  "  parasites  "  at  the  smaller  sacramental 
repasts  held  daily  in  the  temples,  which  would  lack 
the  attraction  of  the  public  feasts. 

Thus  it  came  about  that  in  the  course  of  the  ages 
the  common  people,  especially  the  many  aliens  from 
Asia  Minor,  slave  and  free,  everywhere  tended  to  seek 
more  and  more  a  religion  for  themselves — something 
in  which  they  could  share  equally  and  intimately  ; 
somewhat  as,  in  a  later  period,  the  common  people 
in  so  many  parts  of  Europe  recoiled  from  official 
Catholicism  before  as  well  as  at  the  Reformation,  or 
as  the  townspeople  in  England  later  set  up  their  own 
dissenting  chapels  in  dislike  of  the  Established 
Church.  As  early  as  the  Pelopomiesian  war  we  find 
new  religious  societies  arising  among  the  humbler 
Athenians,  making  accessible  to  them  Dionysian  or 
other  eastern  mysteries  of  sacred  baptism,  and  a 
sacred  banquet  of  "  body  and  blood,"  in  which  a  kid 
was  the  victim.  Some  such  banquet  was  the  normal 
basis ;  and  the  societies,  which  were  numerous,  were 
self-supporting  and  self-governing,  appointing  their 
own  priests  or  priestesses,  and  keeping  their  own 
sacred  books.  In  these  cults  slaves,  aliens,  and 


54  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

women  were  alike  admitted  ;  and,  though  in  some  the 
worship  was  orgiastic,  in  keeping  with  the  then 
common  level  of  popular  culture,  it  is  not  to  be  sup- 
posed that  the  avowed  ideals  of  "  goodness,  chastity, 
piety,"  were  for  such  groups  in  general  devoid  of 
moral  significance.  They  were  condemned  by  the 
educated  classes  alike  in  republican  Greece  and  in 
republican  Rome  as  vulgar  and  licentious  ;  but  if 
these  imputations  are  to  be  fully  believed  as  against 
the  pagan  societies,  they  must  be  equally  believed  as 
against  the  Christians,  concerning  whom,  in  turn,  they 
were  generally  made  in  the  second  and  third  centuries. 
Of  neither  movement,  probably,  were  they  more  than 
partially  true.  In  any  case,  the  Greek  societies  gave 
a  model  to  the  early  Christian  churches  in  more  than 
one  point  of  organisation,  most  of  them  having  had 
"  presbyters  "  and  a  "bishop"  (epitcapos),  and  some 
being  called  "  synagogues,"  a  term  synonymous  with 
ecclesia.  So  great,  finally,  became  the  competitive 
pressure  of  the  private  cults  that  those  of  the  State 
had  to  offer  inducements  as  against  them ;  and  in 
course  of  time  the  once  exclusive  Eleusinian  mysteries 
of  Athens  were  opened  to  all  members  of  the  State, 
and  latterly — save  in  exceptional  cases,  such  as  those 
of  avowed  unbelievers,  or  Epicureans,  or  Christians — 
to  all  members  of  the  Roman  empire  ;  even  the  slaves, 
finally,  being  initiated  at  the  public  expense. 

So  far  as  the  gospels  can  be  taken  to  throw  light 
on  Christian  beginnings,  the  cult  grew  up  under 
conditions  similar  to  those  above  described.  Some  of 
"  the  poor  "  in  Jewry  as  elsewhere  felt  themselves  in 
a  manner  outside  the  established  worship ;  and, 
though  declamation  against  the  rich  had  long  been 
popular,  the  names  given  to  the  legendary  disciples 


SOCIAL  AND  MENTAL  CONDITIONS. 


55 


suggest  that  there  too  the  new  cults  were  in  large 
measure  promoted  by  aliens.  The  accounts  of  the 
founder  as  mixing  much  with  "publicans  and  sinners" 
tell  of  the  presence  of  such  in  the  sect;  and  there 
too  the  constant  presence  of  women  stood  for  a  sense 
either  of  feminine  dissatisfaction  with  the  bareness  of 
the  official  worship,  or  of  the  need  for  a  personal 
recognition  which  Judaism  did  not  give  to  the  subor- 
dinate sex.  It  does  not  appear  that  slaves  were 
similarly  welcomed  in  the  Jewish  stage  of  the  move- 
ment ;  portions  of  the  gospels  even  make  Jesus  appeal 
to  the  ideals  of  the  slave-owner ;  and  nowhere  is  the 
slave  himself  sympathetically  brought  to  the  front. 
But  it  is  clear  that  when  the  cult  entered  on  a  Gentile 
development  it  admitted  slaves  like  the  religious 
societies  of  the  Greeks;  and  in  the  first  Gentile 
period  the  members  appear  to  have  paid  their  way 
and  managed  their  own  affairs  in  the  democratic 
Greek  fashion. 

The  determining  political  condition  everywhere  was 
the  social  sway  of  the  empire,  keeping  all  men  impo- 
tent in  the  higher  public  affairs.  Exclusion  from 
public  life,  broadly  speaking,  had  been  the  cause  of 
the  special  addiction  of  the  women,  the  slaves,  and 
the  unenfranchised  foreigners  of  the  Greek  cities  and 
of  Rome  to  private  cults  and  communions.  Under 
the  empire,  all  the  lay  classes  alike  were  excluded 
from  public  power  ;  and  new  interests  must  be  found 
to  take  the  place  of  the  old.  Within  the  pale  of  the 
Roman  "peace,"  those  interests  were  summed  up  for 
the  majority  in  athletics,  the  theatre,  and  the  circus 
on  the  one  hand  ;  and  on  the  other  in  the  field  of 
religious  practices.  Hopes  of  betterment,  and  despair 
after  vain  revolt,  were  alike  fuel  for  the  religious  spirit ; 


56  PKIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

since  the  hope  turned  to  vaticination,  and  the  despair 
crept  for  shelter  to  the  mysteries  that  promised  a 
better  life  beyond  the  grave.  But  the  prevailing  lot 
of  men  had  become  one  of  un warlike  submission  ;  the 
material  refinements  of  civilisation  had  bred  in  the 
cities  a  new  sensitiveness,  indeed  a  new  neurosis  ;  vice 
itself  set  up  reactions  of  asceticism ;  and  over  all  there 
brooded  the  pessimism  of  the  prostrate  East,  the  mood 
of  men  downcast,  consciously  the  puppets  of  an 
uncontrollable  earthly  destiny,  and  wistful  for  a  higher 
vision  and  rule. 

§  2.  Jewish  Orthodoxy. 

Between  the  new  sect  and  the  normal  or  established 
Jewish  religion,  which  had  contained  within  it  or  was 
easily  adaptable  to  every  element  that  went  to  make 
early  Jesuism,  the  force  of  separation  was  not 
doctrinal  or  intellectual,  but  political  and  economic. 
Save  for  the  later-evolved  concept  of  an  Incarnation — 
which  also,  however,  was  foreshadowed  in  Jewish 
thought — there  is  almost  no  principle  in  the  Christian 
system  that  was  not  to  be  found  either  in  the  sacred 
books  or  in  the  current  rabbinical  teaching  of  the 
Jews,  whose  development  is  to  be  measured  no  less 
by  the  liberal  ethical  teaching  of  such  rabbis  as  Hillel 
than  by  the  mere  traditionalism  ascribed  to  the  mass 
of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees.  Their  sacred  books 
spoke  sympathetically  of  the  poor ;  and  their  sacred 
treasury  must  have  fed  many,  although — as  in  the 
days  of  the  prophets  and  in  our  own  time  in  Europe- 
there  were  some  irrecoucilables.  Even  among  the 
Pharisees  there  were  some  who  proclaimed  the  "law 
of  the  heart "  as  the  highest.  As  regarded  religious 


JEWISH  ORTHODOXY.  57 

thought,  the  Jews'  system  of  sacrifice  on  the  one 
hand,  and  their  higher  or  supra-ecclesiastical  ethic 
on  the  other,  provided  for  all  the  forms  of  bias 
appealed  to  in  the  gospels  and  epistles,  with  the  one 
exception  of  the  kind  of  sentiment  which  sought  a 
demigod  rather  than  a  God ;  a  humanly  sympathetic 
divinity,  acquainted  with  griefs,  rather  than  a  remote 
and  awful  Omnipotence.  Even  this  figure  was  partly 
evolved  on  Jewish  lines,  in  the  conception  of  a 
Messiah  who  should  suffer  and  die.  But  a  Messiah 
who  died  and  did  not  soon  come  again  in  triumph  had 
no  tenable  place  in  the  Jewish  system;  and  when  the 
cult  of  such  a  Messiah  came  into  Gentile  vogue, 
especially  after  the  ruin  of  Jerusalem,  it  was  necessi- 
tated either  to  take  a  new  and  substantive  status 
outside  of  Jewry  or  disappear  altogether.  It  is  true 
that  the  so-called  Nestorians  (properly  Nazarseans)  of 
Armenia  have  reconciled  Judaism  with  Christism  by 
defining  the  sacrifice  of  Jesus  as  the  final  sin-offering, 
while  maintaining  the  other  sacrifices  of  the  Mosaic 
law  ;  but  that  course  was  impossible  to  the  hierarchy 
accused  of  causing  the  crucifixion  ;  and  the  Nestorians 
were  as  anti-Jewish  as  other  Christians. 

Judaism,  so  to  speak,  was  riveted  at  once  to  its 
national  and  to  its  economic  basis.  Its  primary 
appeals  to  Gentile  proselytes  were  those  of  a  great 
historic  shrine  and  a  body  of  sacred  literature ;  and  on 
both  grounds  the  clerical  class  of  Jerusalem  claimed 
a  revenue  from  the  faithful,  Hebrew  or  proselyte. 
Financial  interest  secured  that  the  converted  alien 
should  be  treated  as  the  more  liberal  prophetic  litera- 
ture urged  ;  but  it  was  of  the  essence  of  Judaism  that 
the  temple  or  the  Patriarchate  should  be  the  fiscal 
headquarters  of  all  the  faithful ;  and  herein  lay  a 


58  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

moral  as  well  as  a  financial  limit.  Ordinary  racial 
instinct,  and  ordinary  Gentile  self-interest,  must  tend 
to  clash  with  such  claims  in  the  case  of  rabbinical 
Judea  as  in  that  of  Papal  Rome ;  and  the  merely 
moral  or  ideal  character  of  the  Judaic  influence, 
coupled  with  the  effect  of  the  common  Gentile 
disesteem  for  the  Jewish  personality,  brought  it 
about  that  the  Romanism  of  Jewry,  always  more 
restricted,  collapsed  by  far  the  more  swiftly.  The 
later  collapse  of  Jewish  Jesuism  was  a  phenomenon 
of  the  same  order. 

Early  Jesuism,  it  is  clear,  flourished  as  a  new 
means  of  Jewish  proselytism  among  the  Gentiles; 
and  the  fact  best  established  by  the  dubious  literature 
which  surrounds  the  "  apostles  "  is  that  their  Gentile 
converts  were  expected  to  contribute  to  headquarters, 
just  as  did  the  ordinary  Jew.  Even  after  a  Gentile 
differentiation  had  definitely  begun,  whether  under 
Paul  or  at  the  hands  of  others  who  forged  in  his 
name,  it  was  Jewish  forces  that  did  the  work  so  far 
as  literature  went.  Throughout  the  synoptic  gospels 
the  notion  given  of  the  Messiah's  function  is  for  the 
most  part  latter-day  Jewish  ;  he  is  to  preside  over  the 
approaching  clay  of  judgment,  and  his  apostles  are  to 
judge  the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel.  The  early  Jesuists, 
accordingly,  must  have  held  themselves  included  in 
the  Judaic  fold.  All  sections  alike,  down  to  the  rise 
of  anti- Jewish  Gnosticism,  founded  on  the  Jewish 
sacred  books  in  the  Greek  translation ;  a  moral 
manual  of  the  Jewish  Twelve  Apostles,  as  we  have 
seen,  served  as  a  Jesuist  handbook ;  and  the  ethic  of 
the  gospels  is  throughout,  even  in  its  contradictions, 
substantially  a  Jewish  product.  If  John  the  Baptist 
could  reject  the  racial  pride  and  prejudice^ of  the 


JEWISH  ORTHODOXY .  59 

Jews  as  he  is  alleged  to  have  done,  universalism  had 
already  begun  within  the  Jewish  field.  Even  on  the 
point  of  opposition  to  divorce — an  attitude  deriving 
from  non-Jewish  rather  than  from  Jewish  ideals — 
there  were  elements  in  Jewry  on  which  to  found  as 
against  the  looser  orthodox  practice ;  and  it  is  quite 
likely  that  the  absolute  as  well  as  the  qualified  prohi- 
bition in  the  gospels  came  from  Jewish  pens.  Thus 
the  moral  and  religious  atmosphere  of  Judaism  in 
general  was  perfectly  compatible  with  the  early  Jesuist 
way  of  life.  It  is  a  sectarian  fallacy  to  assume  that 
the  repellent  aspects  typified  by  the  "  Scribes  and 
Pharisees,"  or  even  by  the  shambles  of  the  Temple, 
were  primary  grounds  for  a  moral  revolt  among  Jews 
and  proselytes,  or  that  Jesuism  so  began.  The  types 
of  the  worse  scribes  and  Pharisees  were  very  speedily 
developed  in  the  new  sect,  as  in  every  other  ;  and 
such  Jesuists  as  are  portrayed  in  the  first  epistle  to 
the  Corinthians  cannot  be  supposed  to  have  rejected 
Judaism  on  the  score  of  its  moral  crudity.  What 
they  were  much  more  likely  to  resent  was  its  demand 
for  tribute  concurrently  with  its  disparagement  of  the 
Gentile  proselyte  ;  and,  last  but  not  least,  its  bar- 
barous rite  of  circumcision,  for  which  even  the  pro- 
Jewish  Jesuists  had  finally  to  substitute  baptism. 

The  relation  of  Judaism  to  Jesuism,  then,  was 
somewhat  as  that  of  a  mother  country  to  a  colony; 
the  latter  growing  by  help  of  the  former,  deriving 
from  it  speech,  lore,  ideals,  methods,  models,  and 
prestige,  till  in  time  the  new  environment  elicits 
special  characteristics,  and  mere  geographical  division 
no  less  than  self-interest  vetoes  the  payment  of  the 
old  tribute.  As  usual,  there  was  in  the  colony  a 
loyalist  party  which  bitterly  resisted  the  severance. 


60  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

§  3.  Jewish  Sects  :  the  Essenes. 

While  Josephus  specifies  four  Jewish  "  sects,"  there 
was  in  Jewry  really  only  one  dissenting  sect  in  the 
modern  sense  of  the  term,  apart  from  the  Jesuists. 
Pharisees  and  Sadducees  were  analogous  rather  to  the 
sections  or  "  schools  "  of  the  Churches  of  Rome  and 
England,  the  former  being  "  orthodox  and  more," 
inasmuch  as  they  held  by  the  law,  but  further  insisted 
on  the  doctrine  of  a  future  state,  which  was  not  con- 
tained in  the  Mosaic  books ;  while  the  Sadducees, 
either  from  pre-Maccabean  conservatism  or  from 
Hellenistic  scepticism,  held  by  the  pure  Mosaic 
system,  of  which,  being  for  the  most  part  of  priestly 
status,  they  were  the  main  administrators.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  it  is  the  Pharisees,  who  held  the  tenet  of 
a  future  life,  rather  than  the  Sadducees,  who  rejected 
it,  that  are  most  acrimoniously  handled  in  the  gospels  : 
the  former  being  naturally  the  most  dangerous  com- 
petitors of  the  new  cult  within  the  Jewish  pale.  A 
third  body  mentioned  by  Josephus,  that  of  Judas  the 
Galilean,  was  rather  a  political  than  a  religious 
party,  being  bent  simply  on  maintaining  the  Jewish 
nationality  as  against  the  Romans. 

The  term  "  sect,"  however,  to  some  extent  applies 
to  the  Essenes,  whose  existence  and  characteristics 
are  specially  noteworthy  in  connection  with  Christian 
beginnings.  All  the  evidence  goes  to  show  that  there 
had  existed  in  Jewry  for  many  generations  a  body  so 
named  (or  perhaps  formerly  called  Chassidim),  living 
an  ascetic  life,  rejecting  animal  food  and  animal  sacri- 
fices, avoiding  wine,  warm  baths,  and  oil  for  anointing, 
wearing  white  garments  and  preferring  linen  to  wool, 


JEWISH  SECTS  :  THE  ESSENES.  61 

forbidding  all  oaths  save  one,  and  greatly  esteeming 
celibacy.     Many  of  them   lived   in   a  male   celibate 
community,  by  their  own  labour,  with  community  of 
goods,  on  the  shores  of  the  Dead  Sea,  under  a  strict 
hierarchical   rule ;   but  many   others  lived  scattered 
through   the   Jewish   cities,  some   marrying,  but   all 
maintaining   ascetic  principles.     To  secure  entrance 
into  the  community  there  was  needed  a  long  proba- 
tion.    On  the  side  of  creed  they  held  firmly  by  the 
law  of  Moses,  yet  also  reverenced  the  sun,  to  which 
they  sang  a  morning  hyrnn  of  praise  ;  strictly  observed 
the     Sabbath ;    conducted    their    religious     services 
without  priests,  and  studied  magic  and  angelology, 
but  tabooed  logic  and  metaphysics.     Ethically  the  cult 
was  in  the  main  one  of  physical  purity  and  fraternal 
humility,  hostile  to  slavery  and  war  as  well  as  to  the 
normal  vices,  but  running  to  mysticism  on  the  line  of 
a  belief,  often  seen  in  early  religion,  that  asceticism 
could  raise  men  to  supernatural  powers.     As  a  whole, 
the  system  had  so  much  in  common  with  that  of  the 
Pythagoreans  on  the  one  hand,  and  with  the  Mazdean 
religion  and  Buddhism  on  the  other,  that  it  must  be 
held  to  prove   a   connection   between  these,  and   to 
point  to  a  movement  which  once  spread  over  Asia  as 
far  as  Buddhist  India,  and  over  the  Mediterranean 
world  as  far   as   early   Grecian   Italy,  surviving  for 
many  centuries  in  scattered  sects. 

It  thus  appears  that,  without  the  intervention  or 
even  the  tradition  of  any  quasi-divine  personality, 
there  could  subsist  in  Jewry  a  cult  which  outwent  the 
Christist  in  point  of  asceticism  and  humility,  attaining 
the  kind  of  fraternity  at  which  the  latter  ostensibly 
but  vainly  aimed,  and  maintaining  itself  for  many 
generations  on  substantially  celibate  lines,  partly  by 


62  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

accessions  from  without  under  a  rigid  probation,  and 
partly  by  the  adoption  and  education  of  children. 
Such  a  system,  expressly  aiming  at  selection  and 
exclusion,  negated  the  idea  of  a  world  religion,  and, 
though  it  was  still  standing  in  the  fifth  century,  could 
not  survive  the  final  ruin  of  its  environment,  save  as 
an  ideal  passed  on  to  Christian  monasticism.  But  its 
long  duration  serves  to  make  clear  the  range  of 
possibilities  open  to  religious  movements  in  Palestine 
and  the  East  apart  from  any  gifts  of  leadership  or  any 
semblance  of  supernatural  innovation. 

How  far  Essenism  reacted  on  early  Jesuisrn  cannot 
be  ascertained.  Despite  some  approximations,  such  as 
the  veto  on  oaths  and  the  esteem  for  celibacy,  it  is 
clear  that  there  was  no  such  close  resemblance 
between  the  movements  as  has  been  supposed  by  the 
writers  who  seek  to  identify  them  ;  but  they  tell  of  a 
similar  mental  climate.  The  non-mention  of  Essen- 
ism  in  the  gospels  is  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that 
the  two  systems  were  not  rivals.  One  was  localised, 
monastic,  exclusive  ;  the  other  peregrine  and  propa- 
gandist :  and  only  in  the  minds  of  the  ill-informed 
Koman  forgers  of  the  second  century  could  they  be 
supposed  to  have  come  into  hostile  contact.  Essen- 
ism  needed  no  innovating  Messiah  ;  and  Jesuism  had 
to  go  afield  for  adherents. 

§  4.  Gentile  Cults. 

What  Christism  had  to  compete  with  in  the  Greco - 
Roman  world  was  not  so  much  the  collective  principle 
of  polytheism  or  the  public  worship  of  the  endowed 
temples,  as  the  class  of  semi-private  cults  to  which 
itself  belonged,  and  the  popular  worships  equally 


GENTILE  CULTS.  63 

associated  with  suffering  and  dying  Saviour- Gods. 
Of  these  the  most  prominent  were  the  ancient  worships 
of  the  Syrian  Adonis,  the  Phrygian  Attis,  Dionysos, 
and  the  Egyptian  Osiris,  all  of  which  had  become 
partly  assimilated  in  theory,  in  ritual,  and  in  public 
observance.  But  contemporarily  with  Christianity 
there  began  also  to  spread  through  the  empire  the 
Persian  cult  of  Mithra,  which  had  been  first  intro- 
duced into  the  Roman  army  after  the  Mithridatic 
wars  ;  and  in  the  end  this  became  the  most  dangerous 
rival  of  the  new  church.  All  six  cults  alike  gave  pro- 
minence to  the  idea  of  the  God's  death  and  resur- 
rection ;  and  all  lived  in  a  common  atmosphere  of 
ancient  superstition,  emotional  unrest,  craving  for 
communion,  anxious  concern  for  the  future  and  for  the 
washing  out  of  guilt  by  religious  rites  and  penances. 
And  all  six  deities  were  "  born  of  a  virgin." 

Of  the  competing  cults  in  the  East  the  least 
developed  in  a  theological  sense  were  those  of  Attis 
and  Adonis,  originally  deities  of  the  Vegetation 
principle,  whose  annual  death  and  resurrection  stood 
primarily  for  the  yearly  decay  and  rebirth  of  the 
general  life  of  Nature,  and  secondarily  for  the  waning 
and  waxing  of  the  power  of  the  sun.  While  all  cults 
in  the  ancient  world  tended  to  assimilate,  however, 
the  older  were  marked  by  certain  special  usages ;  and 
in  the  case  of  Attis  and  Adonis  these  were  the  festivals 
which  began  with  mourning  and  ended  in  rejoicing. 
Attis,  son  of  the  virgin  Myrrha,  was  symbolised  by 
the  cut  pine-tree,  which  meant  the  life  principle  in 
man  and  Nature ;  and  at  the  spring  equinoctial 
festival  this  was  carried  in  procession  to  the  temple  of 
Cybele  with  the  effigy  of  a  young  man  bound  on  it,  to 
represent  the  dead  and  mutilated  God.  Anciently,  it 


64  PEIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

would  seem,  there  had  been  so  bound  an  actual  youth 
who  was  slain  as  a  victim,  and  whose  death  was 
supposed  to  ensure  at  once  physical  fertility  and 
moral  well-being  to  his  land  and  people ;  but  in 
virtue  of  the  general  law  of  mitigation  a  mystic 
ceremony  at  length  took  the  place  of  the  primitive 
deed  of  blood.  The  bearing  of  the  God's  name  by 
his  priest  in  the  mysteries  was  a  memorial  of  the  older 
time. 

These  mysteries  were  twofold.  In  the  spring  time, 
Attis  figured  as  a  self -slain  youth,  beloved  by  Cybele, 
the  Mother  of  the  Gods,  and  devoted  to  her  cultus. 
Later  in  the  year,  he  figured  as  Papas,  "  Father,"  and 
Lord  of  All ;  and  in  this  aspect  he  was  more  im- 
portant than  Cybele,  who  was  throned  beside  him  in 
the  mystic  drama,  with  a  crowd  of  women  around. 
The  initiate  became  mystes  Atteos,  the  initiate  of 
Attis  ;  and  at  this  stage  the  God  was  adored  as  the 
bringer  of  peace  to  a  disorderly  world.  But  "  many 
were  the  thyrsus-bearers;  few  were  the  mystac":  it 
was  the  spring  festival  that  dwelt  in  the  common 
knowledge  and  memory ;  and  then  it  was  that,  after 
a  day  of  procession  and  mourning,  a  day  of  solemn 
rites,  and  a  "  day  of  blood"  on  which  the  high-priest 
cut  his  arms  and  presented  his  blood  as  an  offering, 
the  slain  demigod  rose  from  the  dead,  and  all  was 
rejoicing  for  his  resurrection.  It  was  the  great 
Phrygian  festival ;  and  though  the  Romans,  in  intro- 
ducing the  worship  of  the  Great  Mother  while 
Hannibal  maintained  himself  in  Italy,  nominally 
accepted  her  alone,  it  was  impossible  that  the  allied 
worship  of  Attis  should  be  excluded  from  the  later 
mysteries.  The  (jalli  or  mutilated  priests,  who 
figured  in  her  Hilaria  festival,  were  in  fact  the  God's 


GENTILE  CULTS.  66 

representatives.     Thus  his  was   one  of   the  popular 
cults  of  the  later  Roman  world. 

Round  Adonis,  the  Tammuz  of  old  Assyria,  there 
had  played  for  long  ages  a  more  tender  devotion. 
For  the  Syrians  his  name  meant  "  the  Lord  "  (  =  the 
Adonai  of  the  Hebrew  Bible) ;  and  over  the  tale  of 
his  untimely  slaughter  by  the  boar  on  Mount 
Lebanon  the  Eastern  women  had  yearly  wept  for  a 
hundred  generations.  The  "  women  weeping  for 
Tammuz "  in  the  temple  of  Jerusalem  before  the 
exile  were  his  worshippers  ;  and  in  the  Athens  of  the 
days  of  the  Peloponnesian  war  he  received  the  same 
litany  of  mourning.  For  his  sacred  city  of  Byblos  he 
was  as  it  were  the  soul  and  symbol  of  the  yearly 
course  of  Nature ;  the  annual  reddening  of  the 
Adonis  river  by  the  spring  floods  being  for  his 
devotees  a  mystery  of  his  shed  blood.  Then  came 
the  ritual  of  grief,  in  which  his  wooden  and  painted 
effigy,  lying  with  that  of  Aphrodite,  the  Goddess  who 
loved  him,  took  the  place  of  the  victim  in  the  older 
rite  in  which  he  too  was  doubtless  slain  "for  the 
people."  The  "  gardens  of  Adonis,"  shallow  trays  in 
which  various  green  plants  grew  quickly  and  as 
quickly  died,  had  been  originally  charms  to  hasten  the 
fertility  of  the  spring,  like  the  sacrifice  itself ;  but 
long  custom  made  them  mere  symbols  of  untimely 
death,  and  the  cult  was  one  of  pathos  and  com- 
passion, passing  in  the  usual  way  to  exultation  and 
gaiety  when,  after  his  effigies  had  been  thrown  as 
corpses  into  the  sea  or  the  springs,  the  God  rose 
from  the  dead  on  the  third  day,  and  in  the  presence 
of  his  worshippers,  by  some  mummery  of  make- 
believe  or  mechanical  device,  was  represented  as 
ascending  to  heaven.  As  in  the  cult  of  Attis,  it  was 


66  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

women  who  "  found"   the  risen  Lord,  whose  death 
they  had  mourned. 

In  such  worships,  it  will  be  seen,  much  depended 
on  the  spirit  of  sex,  which  was  evoked  by  the  pairing 
of  God  and  Goddess,  a  common  principle  of  the  ancient 
Semitic  pantheon,  here  subtilised  by  romance.  Such 
myths  as  those  of  Attis  and  Adonis,  indeed,  lent 
themselves  to  contrary  emotions,  the  amorous  and  the 
ascetic  passions  figuring  in  the  devotees  by  turns. 
Thus  the  very  eunuch  priests  who  represented  the 
extremity  of  anti-sexualism  were  credited  with  a 
mania  of  licentiousness ;  and  on  the  other  hand  the 
Great  Mother,  who  in  the  primitive  myth  was 
enamoured  of  Attis,  and  yet  in  one  version  mutilated 
him,  was  by  her  graver  devotees  regarded  in  a  holier 
light.  So  even  Aphrodite,  the  lover  of  Adonis,  had 
her  supernal  aspect  as  Urania ;  and  the  legend  of  the 
indifference  of  Adonis,  like  that  of  the  self-mutilation 
of  Attis,  conveyed  a  precept  and  pattern  of  chastity. 
Everywhere,  as  the  world  grew  sophisticated,  and  the 
primitive  simplicity  of  appetite  was  overborne  by 
pessimism  and  asceticism,  the  cruder  cults  tended  to 
become  refined  and  the  Goddess-worships  grew  in 
dignity.  At  the  sacred  city  of  Hierapolis,  in  Syria,  there 
was  long  worshipped  a  Goddess  of  immemorial  fame, 
round  whose  history  there  floated  myths  like  those 
of  Cybele  and  Aphrodite,  Attis  and  Adonis,  but  whose 
prestige  was  apparently  maintained  rather  by  mini- 
mising than  by  retailing  them.  In  her  cult  all  the 
worshippers  were  wont  to  puncture  their  hands  or 
necks,  probably  in  mystic  imitation  of  a  slain  demigod 
such  as  Attis,  connected  with  her  legend;  and  in  her 
service  ascetic  priests  or  hermits  ascended  phallic 
pillars  to  win  sanctity  by  vigils  of  a  week  long.  Thus 


GENTILE  CULTS.  67 

was  set  up  for  the  Goddess  a  religious  renown  com- 
parable to  that  of  Yahweh  of  Jerusalem,  bringing 
multitudes  of  strangers  to  her  every  festival,  and 
tilling  the  treasuries  of  her  priests  with  gifts. 

Of   kindred   character   and   equivalent  range  with 
the  cults  of  Attis  and  Adonis  was  that  of  Dionysos, 
the  most  many-sided  of  the  divinities  adopted  by  the 
Greeks   from   Asia.      Figuring  first  as  Bacchus,  the 
God  of  wine,  he  seems  to  have  made  way  in  early 
Greece  partly  by  virtue  of  the  sheer  frenzy  set  up  in 
his  women  worshippers  by  unwonted  potations ;  but 
such  phenomena  caused  their  own  correction  ;   and 
the  adoption  of  the  cult  by  the  cities  brought  it  within 
the  restraining  sway  of   Greek  culture.     Of  all  the 
older  Greek  worships,  the  most  popular  was  that  (also 
oriental  in  origin)  of  Demeter  and    Persephone,  the 
Mourning  Mother  and  the  Virgin  Daughter,  who  had 
primarily  signified  mother  earth  and  the  seed  corn  ; 
and    with    their   worship    in   the   great    Eleusinian 
mysteries  was  bound  up  that  of  Dionysos.     Son  of 
Zeus   and   the   Virgin    Goddess    Persephone   or   the 
mortal  virgin  Semele — for  the  myths  were  legion — he 
was  carried  in  effigy  as  a  new-born  babe  in  a  manger- 
basket   on   the   eve   of   the   winter- solstice.     In   this 
capacity  he  was  pre-eminently  the  Babe-God,  lacchos, 
"  the  suckling."     Further,  he  figures  in  one  myth  as 
being  torn  to  pieces  by  the  Titans,  and  as  restored  to 
life  or  re-born  (after  Zeus  has  terribly  avenged  him) 
by   his  mother   Semele   or   by  the  Mother-Goddess, 
Demeter  ;  wherefore  he  is  represented  as  a  suckling 
at    Demeter 's    breast.       In    the    triennial   dramatic 
mysteries  in  his  honour  an  eating  of  raw  flesh  by  the 
devotees   was   held    to    commemorate   his   sacrificial 
death,  which   was   however   mystically  conceived   to 


68  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

mean  the  making  of  wine  from  grapes.  In  other  and 
commoner  forms  of  the  sacred  banquet,  the  wine 
figured  specially  as  his  blood,  and  the  bread  as 
Demeter  =  Ceres  ;  and  in  this  transparent  form  the 
symbolism  of  "  body  and  blood  "  was  a  household 
word  among  the  Romans,  in  whose  popular  religion, 
being  assimilated  to  an  ancient  Roman  God,  he  was 
known  as  Liber,  "  the  child,"  as  "  Father  Liber,"  and 
as  Bacchus,  while  Ceres  or  Proserpine  was  paired  with 
him  as  Libera.  The  doctrine,  found  among  the  Mani- 
chaeans  in  the  fourth  century,  that  "  Jesus  hangs  on 
every  tree,"  is  in  all  likelihood  a  development  from  this 
worship,  in  which  Dionysos  was  God  of  the  vine  in 
particular,  but  of  all  vegetation  besides.  For  such 
mystics  as  wrote  and  conned  the  Orphic  hymns, 
however,  he  was  a  God  of  manifold  potency  ;  and  there 
centred  round  him  a  whole  theosophy  of  ascetic  ethic, 
in  which  the  ideal  of  the  worshipper  was  to  strive, 
suffer,  and  conquer  in  common  with  the  God,  who  was 
the  giver  of  immortality. 

Of  his  cult  in  particular  it  is  difficult  to  grasp  any 
general  significance,  so  inextricably  did  it  become 
entwined  with  others,  in  particular  with  the  Phrygian 
cult  of  Sabazios,  and  with  the  Corybantic  mysteries, 
in  connection  with  which  are  to  be  traced  a  whole 
series  of  local  deities  of  the  same  stamp  as  those 
under  notice,  just  as  the  myth  of  Apollo  can  be  seen 
to  have  absorbed  a  whole  series  of  local  Sun-Gods. 
Thus  the  mortal  Jasion  or  lasious  is  slain  by  Zeus  for 
being  the  lover  of  Cybele,  who  however  bears  to  him 
a  divine  son,  Korybas  ;  and  he  in  turn  figures  also  as 
the  son  of  the  Virgin  Persephone,  and  without  father, 
human  or  divine.  In  the  Orphic  hymns  Korybas  is 
the  mighty  Lord  of  the  under- world,  who  frees  the 


GENTILE  CULTS.  M 

spirit  from  all  terrible  visions,  giver  of  blessedness 
and  of  sorrow,  a  God  of  double  nature.  So  Dionysos, 
like  the  Hindu  Fire-God  Agni,  is  born  of  two  mothers ; 
and  like  Hermes  and  Herakles  he  has  descended  to 
Hades  and  returned,  victorious  over  death.  In  all 
such  cults  alike  is  to  be  noted  the  gradual  emergence 
of  the  relation  of  maternity  as  well  as  paternity,  the 
Mother  Goddess  coming  more  and  more  to  the  front 
as  such ;  while  the  Son-God,  in  the  case  of  Dionysos 
and  Demeter,  tends  to  overshadow  or  supersede  the 
Daughter-Goddess,  who  in  Rome  had  twinned  with 
Bacchus  under  their  names  of  Liber  and  Libera. 

In  the  case  of  the  far-famed  cult  of  Osiris,  again, 
there  gradually  took  place  a  similar  transformation. 
In  the  oldest  Egyptian  lore,  Osiris  is  at  once  the 
brother  and  the  husband  of  Isis,  who,  when  he  is 
slain  and  dismembered  by  Typhon,  gathers  together 
the  scattered  limbs  for  burial.  Thereafter  their  son, 
Horus  (who  in  turn  had  been  found  dead  in  his 
floating  cradle  and  reborn  by  his  mother),  avenges 
his  father,  who  remains  Judge  of  the  Dead  in  the 
underworld.  But  as  the  cult  developes,  Horus,  who 
in  one  of  his  aspects — perhaps  originally  signifying 
different  deities — is  an  adult  and  powerful  God, 
becomes  specially  the  child  of  Isis  and  Osiris,  and 
is  typically  represented  as  a  suckling  at  his  mother's 
breast,  or  as  the  babe  born  on  the  eve  of  the  winter 
solstice ;  while  Osiris  remains  the  suffering  God,  to 
be  mourned  and  rejoiced  over ;  and  it  is  to  him  that 
the  devotee  turns  in  the  mysteries  for  the  mystic 
regeneration,  which  involved  a  worship  of  the  Osirian 
cross,  the  emblem  of  the  God.  "  I  clasp  the  sycamore 
tree,"  says  the  Osirified  soul  in  the  Book  of  the  Dead ; 
"  I  myself  am  joined  unto  the  sycamore  tree,  and  its 


70  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

arms  are  opened  unto  me  graciously."  But  Osiris  in 
turn  "  shall  establish  as  prince  and  ruler  his  son 
Horus  ";  and  the  soul  in  the  underworld,  in  some 
rituals,  becomes  one  with  Horus,  as  in  others  with 
Osiris.  Out  of  the  medley  there  emerged  for  the 
popular  mind  the  dominant  impressions  of  Osiris  as 
the  Saviour  and  Judge  of  the  Dead ;  of  Isis  as  the 
Queen  of  Heaven,  the  Sorrowing  Goddess,  the  Mother 
Goddess ;  and  of  Horus  as  the  Divine  Son,  Hor-pa- 
khrot,  "  Horus  the  Child,"  of  whom  the  Greeks  in 
their  fanciful  way  made  a  Harpocrates,  the  God  of 
Silence,  misunderstanding  the  symbol  of  the  finger  in 
the  mouth,  which  for  the  Egyptians  meant  merely 
childhood.  As  we  have  seen,  the  Osirian  cult  and 
that  of  Serapis,  grafted  on  it  in  the  time  of  the 
Ptolemies,  made  popular  the  symbol  of  the  cross  long 
before  Christianity,  and  prepared  for  the  latter  religion 
in  many  other  ways. 

Perhaps  its  closest  counterpart,  however,  was  its 
most  tenacious  rival,  the  worship  of  the  Persian  Sun- 
God  Mithra,  first  introduced  into  Koine  in  the  time 
of  Pompey,  whose  troops  received  it  from  the  Cilician 
pirates,  the  debris  of  the  army  of  Mithridates,  whom 
he  conquered  and  enlisted  in  the  Roman  service. 
Mithra  being  the  most  august  of  all  the  Gods  of  war, 
his  worship  became  the  special  religion  of  the  Roman 
army.  Apart  from  its  promise  of  immortality,  its 
fascination  lay  in  its  elaborate  initiations,  baptisms, 
probations,  sacraments,  and  mysteries,  which  were 
kept  at  a  higher  level  of  moral  stringency  than  those 
of  almost  any  of  the  competing  cults.  The  God  was 
epicene  or  bisexual,  having  a  male  and  a  female 
aspect ;  and  there  seems  to  have  been  no  amorous 
element  in  his  myth  at  the  Christian  period.  Unless 


GENTILE  CULTS.  71 

it  be  decided  that  such  rituals  had  prevailed  all  over 
the  East,  the  Christian  eucharist  must  be  held  to 
have  been  a  direct  imitation  of  that  of  Mithraism, 
which  it  so  closely  resembled  that  the  early  Fathers 
declared  the  priority  of  the  rival  sacrament  to  be 
due  to  diabolic  agency.  The  Mithraist  ritual,  indeed, 
appears  to  have  been  the  actual  source  of  part  of  the 
Christist  mystery-play,  inasmuch  as  Mithra,  whose 
special  epithet  was  "the  Rock,"  was  liturgically 
represented  as  dead,  buried  in  a  rock  tomb,  mourned 
over,  and  raised  again  amid  rejoicing.  For  the 
Mithraists  also  the  sign  of  the  cross,  made  on  the 
forehead,  was  the  supreme  symbol ;  and  it  was 
mainly  their  cult  which  established  the  usage  of 
calling  the  Sun-day,  the  first  of  the  week,  "  the  day 
of  the  Lord,"  Mithra  as  the  Sun  being  the  first  of 
the  seven  planetary  spirits  on  whose  names  the  week 
was  based.  In  the  third  century,  the  chief  place 
of  the  cult  in  the  empire  was  on  the  Vatican  mount 
at  Rome  ;  and  there  it  was  that  Christian  legend 
located  the  martyrdom  of  Peter,  who,  as  we  have 
seen,  was  assimilated  to  Mithra  both  in  name  and 
in  attributes. 

In  a  special  degree  the  Osirian  and  Dionysian  and 
Mithraic  cults  seem  to  have  insisted  on  the  doctrine  of 
immortality  correlatively  with  the  doctrine  of  eternal 
punishment;  and  in  so  far  as  Mithraism  is  to  be 
known  from  the  present  form  of  the  Zendavesta, 
which  is  but  a  revised  portion  of  the  older  Mazdean 
literature,  it  appealed  to  the  imagination  on  this  side 
at  least  as  winningly  as  did  the  Jesuist  literature  in 
respect,  for  instance,  of  the  Apocalypse.  Mithra  was 
the  God  of  the  upper  and  the  nether  world,  the  keeper 
of  the  keys  of  heaven  and  hell,  of  life  and  death  ;  and, 


72  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

like  Osiris,  he  was  the  judge  of  men's  deeds.  Like 
the  other  Saviour-cults,  too,  Mithraism  anticipated 
Christism  in  evolving  the  attraction  of  a  Mother- 
Goddess,  the  worship  of  Cybele  being  adapted  to  his 
as  it  had  been  to  that  of  Attis.  In  one  other  aspect  it 
seems  to  have  run  closely  parallel  to  early  Jesuism. 
The  singular  phrase  in  the  Apocalypse  about  garments 
11  washed  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb  "  points  to  an 
early  Jesuist  use  of  the  practice  of  the  kriobolium, 
which  with  the  taurobolium  was  one  of  the  most 
striking  of  the  Mithraic  rites.  In  these  repulsive 
ceremonies  the  ram  or  bull — always  young,  on  the 
principle  that  the  sacrifice  must  be  pure — was  slain 
over  a  grating,  so  that  the  blood  dripped  on  the 
initiate,  who  was  placed  in  a  pit  beneath,  and  who 
was  instructed  to  wear  the  blood-stained  garment  for 
some  days.  It  was  believed  that  the  ceremony  had  a 
supreme  saving  grace  ;  and  the  initiate  was  solemnly 
described  as  in  ceternum  renatus,  "  born  again  for 
eternity."  In  regard  to  both  animals  the  symbolism 
was  partly  astronomical,  having  latterly  reference  to 
the  sun's  entrance  into  the  constellations  of  the  Bull 
and  the  Ram  at  different  stages  of  his  course.  Mithra's 
oldest  and  best-known  symbol  was  the  bull ;  but  inas- 
much as  the  sun  had  anciently  been  seen  by  the 
(  iKildean  astronomers  to  be  in  the  constellation  Aries 
at  the  spring  season,  the  beginning  of  the  ancient 
year,  the  lamb  had  long  been  likewise  adopted  into 
the  mysteries  of  the  solar  cults.  About  the  beginning 
of  the  Christian  era,  the  year-opening  constellation 
was  Pisces ;  and  the  Divine  Fish  accordingly  figures 
to  a  great  extent  in  early  Christian  symbols. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  primordial  Jesuism,  with  its 
Lamb   "  slain    from   the    founding    of    the    world," 


ETHICS  :  POPULAR  AND  PHILOSOPHIC.  73 

probably  conceived  of  its  deity  in  terms  of  the  astro- 
nomical symbol ;  but  the  prominence  given  by 
Mithraism  to  the  blood-ritual  would  serve  to  bring 
that  into  disuse  among  the  Gentile  Christists,  whose 
creed  further  made  Jesus  the  final  paschal  sacrifice, 
and  reduced  the  apocalyptic  phrase  to  a  moral 
metaphor.  Nonetheless,  the  rites  and  theories  of 
the  great  pagan  cults,  all  of  which  flourished  in 
Palestine  itself  in  the  pre-Roman  period,  must  be 
recognised  as  factors  in  its  creation. 


§  5.  Ethics :  Popular  and  Philosophic. 

It  lies  on  the  face  of  the  case  that  the  Christist  cult 
could  make  no  rapid  headway  by  offering  to  people  of 
any  class  higher  ethical  ideals  than  they  had  already 
been  wont  to  recognise.  To  claim  that  it  did  is  to 
upset  the  concurrent  theorem  that  the  pagan  world 
into  which  Christianity  entered  was  profoundly  corrupt. 
If  men  and  women  on  all  hands  welcomed  the  new 
teaching  for  its  moral  beauty,  they  must  already  have 
acquired  a  taste  for  such  beauty,  and  cannot  con- 
ceivably have  been  "  sunk  in  trespasses  and  sins." 
It  is  true  that  in  every  unlettered  population — in 
modern  India  and  pre-Christian  Mexico  as  well  as  in 
classic  antiquity — a  repute  for  asceticism  has  brought 
great  popular  honour,  men  reverencing  a  self-denial 
they  feel  unable  to  practise.  But  a  cult  and  a  com- 
munity which  actually  seek  to  embrace  the  common 
people  cannot  exact  from  them  a  "  saintliness  "  which 
in  the  terms  of  the  case  is  a  rare  phenomenon.  In 
reality,  the  Christian  ethic  was  duplicated  at  every 
point  by  that  of  Judaism  or  of  one  or  other  of  the 


74  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

pagan  schools  or  cults ;  and  the  contrast  still  commonly 
drawn  between  the  church  and  its  moral  environment 
is  framed  by  merely  comparing  Christian  theory  with 
popular  pagan  practice.  Theory  for  theory,  and  practice 
for  practice,  there  was  no  such  difference. 

If  the  ethical  literature  of  the  period  be  first  taken, 
it  is  found  that  the  teaching  of  (for  instance)  Seneca 
had  so  many  points  of  identity  with  that  of  Paul  as 
to  give  colour  to  a  Christian  theory  that  the  pagan 
moralist  and  the  apostle  had  had  intercourse.  It  is 
now  admitted  that  no  such  intercourse  took  place, 
and  that  the  pretended  letters  of  Paul  and  Seneca  are 
Christian  forgeries  ;  but  the  community  of  doctrine  is 
undisputed.  It  was  largely  traceable  to  elements  of 
oriental  ethic  which  had  been  imported  into  Greek 
Stoicism  by  writers  of  Semitic  race ;  and  on  Seneca's 
side  the  moral  principles  involved  are  at  some  points 
much  further  developed  than  they  can  be  said  to  be 
in  either  the  gospels  or  the  epistles.  In  some  respects 
he  is  concrete  and  practical  where  the  gospels  are 
abstract,  as  when  he  condemns  all  war  and  urges 
habits  of  kindly  fellowship  between  masters  and  slaves. 
On  the  latter  head,  Philo  of  Alexandria,  the  Jewish 
Platonist,  went  still  further,  explicitly  condemning 
slavery  as  the  worst  of  evils  and  denying  Aristotle's 
dictum  that  for  some  men  it  is  the  natural  state. 
Such  doctrines  as  those  of  reciprocity  and  the  forgive- 
ness of  injuries  were  of  course  the  common  property 
of  the  moralists  of  all  civilised  countries  before  the 
Christian  era — of  the  teachers  of  China  and  India 
as  well  as  of  Greece;  and  the  duty  of  practical 
beneficence,  which  in  a  section  of  the  gentilising 
third  gospel  is  made  the  whole  question  of  moral 
and  religious  life,  was  indicated  in  almost  exactly 


ETHICS :  POPULAR  AND  PHILOSOPHIC.  75 

the  same  terms  in  the  much  more  ancient  sacred  books 
of  Egypt. 

Where  the  Christist  ethic  differed  most  from  that  of 
the  higher  paganism  was  on  the  point  of  sacrificial 
substitution  or  "  salvation  by  blood,"  and  on  the 
point  of  moral  self-humiliation.  Stoicism  on  the 
contrary  cultivated  self-respect,  here  carrying  on  a 
strain  of  thought  found  in  rabbinical  Judaism  ;  and 
it  is  at  least  an  open  question  whether  "  voluntary 
humility  "  (which  in  the  later  epistles  is  disparaged) 
proved  in  practice  the  more  efficient  moral  principle. 
In  such  a  writer  as  Juvenal  we  find  a  protest  against 
the  habit  of  praying  to  the  Gods  for  all  manner  of 
boons,  the  argument  being  that  the  Gods  know  better 
than  their  worshippers  what  the  latter  really  need. 
In  the  gospel,  a  similar  teaching  precedes  the  Lord's 
prayer  ;  and  whereas  in  both  cases  the  principle  laid 
down  is  deviated  from,  the  pagan,  who  prays  for  a 
sound  mind  in  a  sound  body,  is  in  no  worse  case  than 
the  Christist,  who  proceeds  to  pray  for  daily  bread — 
if,  that  is,  the  ordinary  rendering  be  accepted.  If,  as 
seems  probable,  the  intention  was  to  pray  for 
"  spiritual  food,"  the  contrast  is  again  between  a 
cultivation  of  self-reliance  and  a  cultivation  of  the 
sense  of  spiritual  dependence.  Yet  at  bottom,  inas- 
much as  the  sense  of  divine  support  would  theoreti- 
cally give  confidence,  the  practical  outcome  was 
probably  the  same,  for  good  or  for  evil.  When,  how- 
ever, to  the  doctrine  of  salvation  by  faith  the  Pauline 
theology  added  the  principle  that  God  was  the  potter 
and  man  the  clay,  without  moral  rights,  there  was  set 
up  a  conception  of  morals  which  could  not  but  be 
demoralising,  and  to  which  there  was  no  parallel  in 
the  higher  pagan  teaching. 


76  PKIMITIVE  CHKISTIANITY. 

As  regards  the  Christist  doctrine  of  sacrificial  salva- 
tion, it  is  found  that  both  under  Judaism  and  under 
paganism  higher  moral  standards  had  been  reached 
by  many  thinkers ;  and  Christism,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  rather  an  adhesion  to  the  popular  religious  ethic, 
which  on  this  side  was  of  an  immemorial  antiquity. 
So,  too,  many  of  the  greater  pagan  and  Jewish 
thinkers,  while  holding  to  the  belief  in  immortality, 
had  long  before  transcended  the  doctrine  of  future 
rewards  and  punishments,  and  had  repelled  the  con- 
ception of  a  God  of  wrath ;  whereas  the  Christists 
stressed  the  conceptions  prevalent  among  average 
Jews  and  Gentiles,  taking  over  bodily,  in  particular, 
the  popular  idea  of  hell-torments,  which  was  as  vivid, 
and  as  inefficacious,  in  the  ancient  world  as  in  the 
medieval.  Worse  still,  the  new  faith  ultimately 
introduced  the  frightful  dogma  of  the  damnation  of 
all  unbaptised  infants,  a  teaching  before  undreamt 
of,  and  capable  only  of  searing  the  heart.  For  the 
rest,  the  formal  ethic  was  very  much  the  same  in  all 
cults  as  to  the  duties  of  honesty,  truthfulness,  charity, 
and  chastity  ;  and  the  practice  in  all  seems  to  have 
been  alike  precarious.  Not  any  more  than  any  of  the 
contemporary  religions  did  Christism  offer  any  such 
social  or  political  guidance  as  might  conceivably  have 
arrested  the  political  paralysis  and  decadence  of  the 
whole  imperial  world  ;  on  the  contrary,  the  gospels 
and  epistles  alike  predict  a  speedy  doomsday,  and 
counsel  political  submission,  showing  no  trace  of  any 
other  ideal;  while  at  the  end  of  the  second  century 
such  a  teacher  as  Origen  is  found  coupling  the 
principle  of  the  universal  Roman  dominion  with  that 
of  the  universal  church.  To  any  surviving  vestiges  of 
the  ideal  of  self-government,  Christian  literature  was 


ETHICS :  POPULAK  AND  PHILOSOPHIC.  77 

broadly  hostile.  Inasmuch,  too,  as  the  gospel 
explicitly  urged  celibacy  as  a  condition  of  ready 
salvation  (Luke  xx.  35 ;  cp.  Matthew  xix.  12),  it 
tended  to  hold  at  arm's  length  the  mass  of  normal 
people  and  to  attract  the  fanatics  and  the  pretenders 
to  sanctity.  In  all  likelihood,  however,  such  doctrines 
were  stressed  only  by  the  more  ascetic  teachers  and 
sects ;  the  Pauline  letters,  for  instance,  holding  a 
middle  course. 

Insofar,  finally,  as  the  principle  of  brotherly  love 
is  traditionally  held  to  distinguish  Christist  teaching 
and  practice  from  that  of  either  Jews  or  pagans,  there 
has  occurred  a  fallacy  of  inference.  All  the  documents 
go  to  show  that  the  inculcation  and  profession  of 
mutual  love  came  currently  from  mouths  which 
passed  with  no  sense  of  incongruity  to  denunciation. 
In  Christian  tradition,  the  John  who  figured  as  the 
preacher  of  love  was  without  misgiving  called  a  "  son 
of  thunder "  and  reputed  to  have  shown  intense 
malice  towards  a  heretic  ;  and  all  the  early  teachers 
in  turn,  from  Paul  to  Tertullian,  are  found  alter- 
nating between  praise  of  love  and  display  of  its 
contrary,  even  as  Jesus  is  made  by  the  gospel- 
framers  to  vituperate  the  contemporaries  whom  he 
was  supposed  to  have  exhorted  to  love  their  enemies. 
Even  the  duty  of  forgiveness  is  in  one  passage 
enforced  by  the  threat  of  future  torture  at  the  hands 
of  a  Heavenly  Father  who  is  thus  to  imitate  the 
cruelties  of  human  law  ;  whereas  rationalistic  thinkers 
among  the  Greeks  a  century  or  two  before  had 
grounded  the  duty  on  the  naturalness  of  error,  urging 
that  wrongdoers  should  be  taught  rather  than  hated. 
So  far  were  the  Christists  at  any  period  from 
attaining  the  height  of  feeling  kindly  towards  those 


78  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

outside  their  creed,  that  they  exhibited  an  excep- 
tional measure  of  strife  among  themselves — this  by 
mere  reason  of  the  openings  for  strife  set  up  by 
their  dogmatic  system  and  the  need  of  unifying  it. 
In  times  of  persecution,  doubtless,  they  were  thrown 
together  in  feeling,  as  any  other  community  would 
be  ;  but  here,  in  the  terms  of  the  case,  it  was  the 
persecution,  not  the  creed,  that  created  the  fraternity. 
Nor  can  it  be  said  that  any  contemporary  Christian 
teachers,  unless  it  might  be  some  of  the  ostracised 
Gnostics,  compare  well  in  point  of  serenity  and  self- 
control  with  such  pagans  as  the  later  Stoics.  For  the 
rest,  the  human  material  indicated  in  the  Pauline 
accounts  of  the  congregational  habit  of  glossolalia, 
"  speaking  with  tongues  "  (a  mere  hysterical  outcry,  of 
which  the  sounds  had  no  meaning),  is  clearly  neurotic, 
and  must  have  been  liable  to  all  manner  of  lapses. 

To  say  this  is  but  to  say  that  actual  Christianity 
at  length  became  popular  in  the  only  possible  way 
— by  assimilating  ordinary  human  nature  in  mass. 
Had  it  persistently  transcended  or  coerced  average 
character,  it  could  never  have  become  one  of  the 
world-religions.  To  say,  again,  that  the  written 
doctrine  at  its  best  prescribed  higher  standards  than 
those  actually  followed  by  its  adherents,  is  but  to 
claim  what  can  equally  be  claimed  for  many  other 
systems,  popular  and  philosophic.  The  fundamental 
source  of  error  in  this  connection  is  the  assumption 
that  mere  moral  doctrine  can  possibly  regenerate  any 
society  independently  of  a  vital  change  in  social  and 
intellectual  conditions.  In  the  ancient  world,  as  in 
the  modern,  these  were  the  substantial  determinants 
for  the  mass  of  men  and  women. 


CHAPTER  III. 

CONDITIONS    OF    SURVIVAL. 

§  1.  Popular  Appeal. 

OVERSHADOWED    among    the    Jews    by   the    common 
traditions  of  Judaism,  and  faced  among  the  Gentiles 
by  such  competition  as  we  have  seen,  the  Christian 
cult  had  to  acquire  all  the  chief  attractions  of  popular 
pagan  religion   if   it  was   to  outdo  its  rivals.     Such 
success  could  never  have  been  reached  through  mere 
superiority  of  ethical  ideal,  even  had  such  superiority 
been   present :    by  the  admission  even  of  Christian 
advocates,  there  were  high  moral  ideals  in  most  of  the 
pagan  ethical  systems  current   among   the  educated 
class ;  but  those  systems  never  became  popular,  not 
seeking    to  be   so.     To    gain    the    mass,    the    new 
propagandists  found,  the  tastes  of  the  mass  had  to  be 
propitiated  ;   and  at  best   the  more  conscientious  of 
them  could  but  hope  to  control  the  ignorance  and  the 
superstition   they  sought  to  attract.      When    in   the 
second  and  third  centuries  the  more  rigid  Puritans, 
such   as    the    Montanists,    formed    themselves    into 
special  communities,  they  were  necessarily  repudiated 
by  the  main  body,  which  had  to  temper  its  doctrine 
to  the  characters  of  the  average  laity  and  the  average 
clergy.      Thus  the  development  of  primitive   Chris- 
tianity was  necessarily  such  an  assimilation  of  neigh- 
bouring lore  and  practice  as  we  have  already  in  part 

70 


80  PKIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

traced.  The  story  of  the  Christ  had  to  take  on  all 
the  lasting  dramatic  features  of  the  prehistoric 
worships  ;  and  the  mysteries  had  as  far  as  possible  to 
embody  those  details  in  the  dramatic  pagan  fashion. 
Where  dramatisation  was  going  on,  new  details  would 
naturally  be  added,  all  tending  to  the  same  end  ;  and 
on  the  basis  of  these  early  dramatic  inventions  would 
arise  many  of  the  gospel  narratives.  This,  however, 
must  have  been  a  matter  of  time. 

In  the  earlier  stages  of  propaganda,  the  appeal  was 
primarily  to  Jews,  and  secondarily  to  Jew  proselytes  ; 
but  after  the  destruction  of  the  temple  of  Jerusalem 
it  must  have  been  made  in  an  increasing  degree  to 
Gentiles,  chiefly  of  the  poorer  classes,  whether 
artisans  or  traders.  As  among  the  pagan  religious 
societies  before  mentioned,  slaves  were  admitted ; 
such  being  not  seldom  in  as  good  a  position  as 
artisans.  There  is  also  evidence  that,  on  the  avowed 
theological  principles  of  the  sect,  men  even  of  bad 
repute  were  received,  of  course  on  condition  of 
repentance.  "  Let  him  that  stole,  steal  no  more,"  is 
one  of  the  injunctions  in  one  of  the  later  epistles. 
In  the  nature  of  the  case  such  adherents  could  not  be 
multiplied,  in  the  teeth  of  the  attractions  of  the  other 
cults,  without  a  continual  offer  of  congenial  entertain- 
ment ;  and  the  weekly  "  love-feast,"  on  the  "  day  of 
the  Lord,"  would  be  the  first  mainstay.  The  constant 
warnings  and  admonitions  in  the  epistles  exclude  the 
notion  that  these  assemblies  escaped  the  usual  risks 
of  disorder ;  and  the  standing  problem  of  the  super- 
visors was  to  maintain  the  social  attraction  without 
tolerating  open  licence.  Insofar  as  they  succeeded, 
it  was  by  appeal  to  ideals  of  abstinence  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  had  long  been  current  in  the  East. 


POPULAK  APPEAL.  81 

In  the  main,  the  popular  success  of  the  movement 
must  have  depended  on  a  compromise.  When 
"  freedom  from  the  yoke  of  the  law  "  went  so  far  as 
to  set  up  a  serious  scandal  among  the  pagans 
(1  Cor.  v.)  it  was  necessarily  suppressed ;  but  from 
the  first  there  evidently  occurred  such  irregularities 
as  were  later  charged  by  Tertullian  against  his  fellow- 
Christians  in  the  matter  of  their  nocturnal  assemblies. 
Only  out  of  average  material  could  a  popular  move- 
ment be  made,  and  the  more  the  cult  spread  the 
more  was  it  compelled  to  assimilate  the  usages  of 
paganism,  giving  them  whatever  new  colour  or  pretext 
seemed  best.  But  to  the  successful  manipulation  of 
such  a  movement  there  was  necessary  a  body  of  pro- 
pagandists, a  written  doctrine,  and  a  machinery  of 
organisation ;  and  it  was  chiefly  by  the  development 
of  such  machinery  that  the  Christist  movement 
secured  itself  in  the  struggle  for  survival.  In  this 
regard  its  success  as  against  Mithraism  becomes 
perfectly  intelligible.  The  priests  of  Mithra  seem  never 
to  have  aimed  at  popular  acceptance  save  in  so  far  as 
their  cult  became  co-extensive  with  the  Koman  army  ; 
their  ideal  being  rather  that  of  a  religious  free- 
masonry than  that  of  an  open  community.  The 
Christists,  on  the  other  hand,  seem  to  have  carried  on 
from  the  first  the  Jewish  impulses  of  fanaticism  and 
proselytism,  aiming  at  popularity  with  the  acquired 
Jewish  knowledge  of  the  financial  possibilities  of  any 
numerous  movement. 

§  2.  Economic  Causation. 

The  play  of  economic  interest  in  the  establishment 
and  maintenance  of  religions  is  one  of  the  constant 


82  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

forces  in  their  history.  In  the  simplest  forms  of 
savage  life,  the  medicine-man  or  priest  makes  a 
superior  living  out  of  his  function  ;  and  every  powerful 
cult  in  antiquity  enriched  its  priests.  The  developed 
worships  of  Assyria  and  Babylon,  Phoenicia  and 
Egypt,  were  carried  on  by  great  priestly  corporations, 
with  enormous  revenues ;  those  of  the  Egyptian 
priesthood  in  particular  being  reckoned  even  in  the 
Koman  period  at  a  third  of  the  wealth  of  the  nation. 
Early  Greece  and  Rome,  in  comparison,  showed  little 
ecclesiastical  development  by  reason  simply  of  the 
fact  that  their  relative  political  freedom  offered  so 
many  other  channels  to  economic  energy.  In  repub- 
lican Rome,  priesthood  was  a  caste-privilege  enjoyed 
by  a  select  few,  the  majority  of  the  ruling  class  being 
content  to  have  it  so ;  and  there  and  in  Greece  alike 
the  normal  conception  of  deities  as  local,  with  local 
worships,  precluded  even  the  thought  of  a  universal 
priesthood,  though  the  Roman  policy  gave  all  the 
Gods  of  the  extending  State  a  place  in  the  common 
pantheon.  In  old  Greece  it  came  about  that  the  fixed 
ideal  of  the  City- State,  and  the  very  multiplicity  of 
cults  even  in  the  separate  states,  kept  all  the  worships 
isolated ;  while  the  republican  habit  kept  the  priests 
and  priestesses  members  of  the  body  politic,  and  not 
associations  apart.  The  Christian  church  began  its 
historic  growth  on  this  ground,  in  the  period  of 
imperialism  and  decadence,  with  the  eastern  examples 
before  it,  the  Jewish  system  of  church-finance  and 
propaganda  to  proceed  upon,  the  Greek  democratic 
practice  to  facilitate  its  first  steps,  and  the  Roman 
sway  to  allow  of  its  spread  and  official  organisation. 
Lastly  came  the  usage,  imitated  from  the  later  political 
and  religious  life  of  the  Greeks,  of  Church  Synods,  in 


ECONOMIC  CAUSATION.  83 

which  disruptive  doctrinal  tendencies  were  more  or 
less  controlled  by  the  principle  of  the  majority  vote, 
and  the  weaker  groups  were  assisted  and  encouraged 
by  the  others.  In  every  aspect,  the  evolution  was  by 
way  of  adaptation  on  tried  lines. 

As  we  have  seen,  Judaism  in  the  Hellenistic  and 
Roman  period  was  financed  through  a  system  of 
travelling  "  apostles  "  and  collectors,  who  followed  up 
the  dispersed  Jewish  race  wherever  it  flourished,  and 
got  together  great  revenues  for  the  temple  service  and 
the  priestly  and  rabbinical  class.  Jesuism  began  on 
those  lines,  and  so  set  up  habits  of  intercommunica- 
tion between  its  groups,  which  for  their  own  part  were 
locally  and  independently  financed  by  their  members 
in  the  Greek  and  Jewish  fashion.  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  practice  of  enthusiasts  such  as  Paul 
would  appear  to  have  been,  the  principle  that  "  the 
labourer  is  worthy  of  his  hire  "  must  have  become 
general ;  and  insofar  as  special  preaching  was  a 
requisite  and  an  attraction  for  the  members,  the 
travelling  preachers  would  have  to  be  fee'd  or  salaried. 
One  of  the  later  epistles  makes  mention  of  apostles, 
prophets,  evangelists,  pastors,  and  teachers,  as  different 
types  ;  also  of  elders  (presbyters) ,  deacons,  and  bishops 
(overseers)  ;  and  as  the  groups  increased  and  began  to 
possess  buildings,  the  creation  of  professional  oppor- 
tunities set  up  a  new  economic  interest  in  propaganda. 

In  neither  Greek  nor  Roman  life  was  the  phenomenon 
new.  Centuries  before  the  Christian  era,  the  influx  of 
the  Dionysian  and  other  mystic  cults  in  Greece  had 
been  followed  by  the  rise  of  swarms  of  religious 
mendicants,  many  of  whom  carried  with  them  sacred 
books,  and  ministered  consolation  while  playing  on 
credulity ;  and  on  a  higher  plane  the  educated 


84  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

"  sophists "  or  humanists  of  the  pre-Macedonian 
period  had  made  a  livelihood  by  moral  and  philo- 
sophical teaching  or  lecturing.  Later,  the  Stoics  and 
other  philosophers  became  a  species  of  religious 
directors  or  "  spiritual  advisers  "  as  well  as  ethical 
lecturers ;  and  in  Rome  especially  this  calling  had 
practically  the  status  of  a  profession.  Thus  had 
arisen  a  specific  means  of  livelihood  for  the  whole 
class  of  educated  men  without  official  posts  or  inherited 
incomes.  But  any  religious  cult  which  should  set  up 
an  organisation  would  have  as  against  such  teachers 
an  obvious  financial  advantage,  in  respect  of  its  power 
of  attracting  numbers,  its  local  permanence,  and  its 
means  of  collecting  revenue  ;  and  even  men  incapable 
of  success  as  lecturers  could  attain  relatively  secure 
positions  as  presbyters  or ' '  bishops ' ' — that  is,  overseers, 
first  of  single  churches,  and  later  of  district  groups. 
The  original  function  of  the  bishop  was  that  later 
assigned  to  "  elders  "  in  the  presbyterian  system — 
the  supervision  of  the  public  offerings  or  "  collec- 
tions "  and  their  distribution  among  needy  brethren. 
Later,  the  bishop  became  the  religious  head  of  the 
group,  and  its  representative  in  communication  with 
others.  Not  till  such  organisation  was  reached  could 
the  new  sect  count  on  permanence. 

An  important  source  of  income  from  an  early  stage 
was  the  munificence  of  the  richer  women  converts  ; 
and  insofar  as  the  Christist  movement  stood  for  a 
restraint  on  sexual  licence  it  doubtless  gained  from  the 
moral  bias  as  well  as  from  the  superstition  of  women 
of  the  upper  and  middle  classes  throughout  the 
empire.  The  richer  women  were  indeed  made  to  feel 
that  it  was  their  duty  to  make  ''oblations"  in  propor- 
tion to  their  means.  On  the  other  hand,  then  as 


ECONOMIC  CAUSATION.  85 

now,  the  giving  of  alms  to  the  poor  was  a  means  of 
enlisting  the  sympathetic  support  of  serious  women  ; 
and  the  Christists  here  had  a  lead  not  only  from 
oriental  example  in  general  and  that  of  later  Judaism 
in  particular,  but  from  the  policy  of  food-doles  now 
systematically  pursued  in  the  Roman  empire.  The 
later  epistles  show  that  much  was  made  of  the  good 
offices  of  "  widows,"  who,  themselves  poor  and  wholly 
or  partly  supported  by  the  congregations,  would  serve 
as  comforters  of  suffering  or  bereaved  members,  and 
ministrants  to  the  sick.  The  death-rate  was  doubtless 
high  in  the  eastern  cities,  then  as  now.  In  this  way 
were  attracted  to  the  church  large  masses  of  the 
outside  poor  who  were  not  similarly  considered  or 
sought  for  by  any  of  the  competing  pagan  cults.  But 
it  was  necessary  to  compete  in  other  ways  with  the 
mass  of  itinerant  diviners  and  religious  mendicants, 
who  had  much  the  same  kind  of  vogue  as  the  begging 
friars  of  later  Christendom ;  and  exorcists  were  at  an 
early  date  a  recognised  class  of  officers  in  connection 
with  the  Christian  churches. 

At  what  stage  revenue  began  to  be  derived  from 
the  usage  of  praying  for  the  souls  of  the  dead  it  is 
impossible  to  say  ;  but  as  early  as  the  third  century 
it  is  found  to  be  customary  to  recite  before  the  altar 
the  names  of  givers  of  oblations,  who  were  then 
publicly  prayed  for.  In  various  other  ways  the  church 
was  able  to  elicit  gifts.  It  lies  on  the  face  of  all  the 
canonical  books  that  a  prediction  of  the  speedy  end 
of  the  world  was  one  of  the  constant  doctrines  of 
the  early  church  ;  and  such  a  belief  would  naturally 
elicit  donations  in  the  first  century  as  it  did  in  the 
tenth.  Obviously,  too,  the  gradual  development  of 
the  "  mysteries  "  would  strengthen  the  hands  of  the 


86  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

priestly  class.  In  particular,  as  it  was  early  made 
compulsory  on  all  baptised  persons,  except  penitents, 
to  take  the  sacrament,  the  privilege  of  administering 
or  withholding  the  eucharist  was  a  sure  source  of 
revenue,  as  was  the  power  of  initiation  into  the 
mysteries  of  the  other  cults  for  their  ministrants. 


§  3.  Organisation  and  Sacred  Books. 

It  was  finally  to  the  joined  influences  of  ecclesiastical 
organisation  and  of  popular  sacred  books  that  Christism 
owed  its  measure  of  success  as  against  the  freely- 
competing  pagan  cults  ;  and  on  both  sides  its  primary 
advantage,  as  we  have  seen,  came  from  its  Judaic 
basis.  For  nearly  two  centuries,  the  Hebrew  Bible, 
made  widely  accessible  in  the  Septuagint  version,  was 
its  literary  mainstay,  by  reason  of  the  prestige 
attaching  to  such  a  mass  of  ancient  religious  literature 
in  the  Greco-Roman  world  ;  and  whereas  other  cults 
also  had  their  special  lore,  the  Christist  movement 
was  specially  buttressed  by  its  system  of  ecclesiastical 
union,  also  imitated  from  the  Judaic.  The  eccle- 
siastical system,  above  all,  was  a  means  to  the 
development  of  the  new  sacred  books  which  completed 
the  definition  of  Christianity  as  something  apart 
from  Judaism  ;  and  these  in  turn  made  a  permanent 
foundation  for  the  historic  church.  A  glance  at  the 
cult  associated  with  the  name  of  the  pagan  Apollonius 
of  Tyana,  who  won  fame  in  the  first  century,  makes 
it  clear  that  even  where  a  great  renown  attached  to  a 
travelling  religious  reformer  and  reputed  wonder- 
worker, and  where  an  adoring  biography  served  in 
some  degree  to  prolong  his  fame,  the  lack  of  a 


ORGANISATION  AND  SACRED  BOOKS.  87 

hierarchy  or  connected  series  of  religious  groups 
prevented  on  the  one  hand  its  continuance,  and  on 
the  other  hand  the  necessary  development  of  the 
literature  which  should  conserve  it. 

The  first  traceable  literature  special  to  the  Christians, 
as  we  have  seen,  consisted  in  "  apostolic  "  and  sub- 
apostolic  epistles  of  exhortation,  which  were  read  aloud 
in  the  churches  after  the  Jewish  manner.  Priestly 
needs  conserved  such  documents,  and  further  evoked 
forgeries,  aimed  against  new  heresies  and  schisms.  But 
the  mass  of  men  are  always  more  easily  to  be  attracted 
by  narrative  than  by  homilies ;  and  the  mystery-play, 
by  means  of  which  alone  could  the  church  at  the 
outset  compete  with  the  pagan  cults  similarly 
provided,  lent  itself  to  a  written  as  well  as  to  an  acted 
history.  Anyone  who  will  attentively  follow  the 
account  of  the  Last  Supper,  Betrayal,  Passion,  Trial, 
and  Crucifixion  in  the  first  gospel,  will  see  that  it 
reproduces  a  series  of  closely-continuous  dramatic 
scenes,  with  no  room  given  to  such  considerations  as 
would  naturally  occur  to  a  narrator  of  real  events, 
and  no  sign  of  perception  of  the  extreme  improbability 
of  the  huddled  sequence  set  forth.  A  more  or  less 
unnatural  compression  of  events  is  the  specific  mark 
of  drama,  even  in  the  hands  of  great  masters,  as  Shak- 
spere  and  Ibsen ;  and  the  primitive  mystery-play, 
as  might  be  expected,  is  excessively  compressed. 
Jesus  is  made  to  take  the  Passover  after  dark ;  then 
to  go  forth  in  the  night  with  his  disciples,  who  sleep 
while  he  prays ;  then  to  be  captured  in  the  darkness 
by  a  "  multitude  "  ;  then  to  be  taken  straight  to  the 
high  priest,  "  where  the  scribes  and  the  elders  were 
gathered  together."  These  now  proceed,  in  the 
middle  of  the  night,  to  "  seek  false  witnesses,"  and 


88  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

"  many  false  witnesses "  come,  to  no  purpose,  till 
"  afterward  "  come  two  who  testify  to  his  words  about 
destroying  the  temple;  whereupon  he  is  judged  and 
buffeted,  and  the  night's  history  ends  with  the  episode 
of  Peter's  denial.  No  hint  is  ever  given  of  anything 
said  or  done  or  felt  by  Jesus  on  the  way  from  the 
Supper  to  the  Mount,  or  in  the  interval  between  the 
Jewish  and  the  Roman  trials. 

Such  a  narrative  cannot  have  been  originally  com- 
posed for  reading.  A  writer,  whether  inventing  or 
reproducing  hearsay,  would  have  sought  to  explain  the 
strangely  protracted  midnight  procedure  of  the  high 
priest  and  scribes  and  elders  ;  would  have  given  some 
thought  to  the  time  necessary  between  event  and 
event ;  would  have  thought  of  the  Lord  in  his 
dungeon.  The  story  before  us  yields  exactly  what 
could  be  scenically  enacted,  nothing  more  ;  and  where 
on  the  stage  the  successive  scenes  would  originally 
raise  no  question  of  the  time  taken,  the  unreflecting 
narrative  loses  all  verisimilitude  by  making  everything 
happen  in  unbroken  sequence,  and  by  making  the 
Master  utter  words  of  prayer  which,  apart  from  the 
audience  of  the  drama,  there  was  no  one  to  hear.  In 
the  play  the  "  false  witnesses  "  would  of  necessity  be 
sent  for  and  introduced  without  lapse  of  time,  and  the 
action  would  raise  in  a  popular  audience  no  perplexity, 
where  the  narrative  loses  all  semblance  of  probability 
by  turning  the  dramatic  act  into  a  historical  process. 
After  the  unspecified  slight  pause  till  "  the  morning 
was  come,"  the  action  is  resumed  before  Pilate  with 
the  same  dramatic  speed,  and  the  execution  impossibly 
follows  immediately  on  the  trial.  We  are  reading  the 
bare  transcript  of  a  mystery-drama ;  a  transcript  so  bare 
that,  in  the  scene  of  the  Passion,  the  speech  beginning 


ORGANISATION  AND  SACRED  BOOKS.  89 

"  Sleep  on  now,"  and  that  beginning  "  Arise,  let  us 
be  going,"  are  put  together  as  if  they  were  one 
utterance,  without  specification  of  the  required  exit 
and  entrance  between. 

Such  a  document  is  in  itself  the  proof  of  the 
priority  of  the  mystery  play  to  the  gospel  story.  In 
this  degree  of  detail  the  play  must  belong  to  a  stage 
of  the  movement  at  which  it  had  made  some  Gentile 
headway ;  and  its  reduction  to  writing  may  be 
supposed  to  have  taken  place  either  at  a  time  when 
the  Christians  by  reason  of  persecution  were  pre- 
vented from  carrying  on  their  usual  rituals  or  festivals, 
or,  more  probably,  when  the  hierarchy  decided  for 
prudential  or  disciplinary  reasons  to  abandon  the 
regular  resort  to  dramatic  spectacle.  It  does  not 
follow,  of  course,  that  none  of  the  didactic  parts  of 
the  gospel  were  in  writing  before  the  play  was 
transcribed ;  but  the  fact  that  none  of  the  Pauline 
epistles  quote  any  of  the  Jesuine  teachings,  and  that 
the  first  Clementine  epistle  alludes  to  but  one  or  two, 
is  a  reason  for  holding  that  they  came  very  slowly 
into  existence.  The  dramatic  development  would 
naturally  occur  for  the  most  part  or  wholly  in 
Gentile  hands.  It  is  not  certain,  indeed,  that  the 
later  Jews  remained  uniformly  averse  to  drama,  which 
was  partly  forced  on  them  by  the  Herods ;  and  the 
theory  of  a  dramatic  origin  for  the  Apocalypse  is  not 
quite  untenable ;  but  it  happens  that  the  most 
obviously  dramatic  parts  of  the  gospel  story  are  those 
which,  on  Gentile  lines,  throw  the  guilt  of  the  cruci- 
fixion on  the  Jews. 

When  once  a  gospel  existed,  interpolation  and 
alteration  were  for  some  generations  easy  ;  and  what 
happened  was  a  multiplication  of  doctrines  and 


90  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

documents  at  the  hands  of  different  groups  or  sects  or 
leaders,  the  men  with  dogmatic  or  moral  ideas  taking 
this  means  to  establish  them,  without  regard  to  the 
coherence  or  consistency  of  the  texts.  Many  passages 
are  visibly  inserted  in  order  to  countervail  others,  it 
being  easier  to  add  than  to  suppress.  Only  late  in 
the  second  century  can  a  canon  have  begun  to  be 
formed,  as  the  Clementine  epistles  quote  a  now  lost 
document  in  the  nature  of  a  Gospel,  and  Justin's 
"Memoirs  of  the  Apostles"  diverge  from  those 
preserved.  The  later  rejection  by  the  Church  of  such 
documents  proves  them  to  have  been  regarded  as  in 
part  heretical ;  and  parts  of  the  canonical  gospels 
were  altered  for  various  dogmatic  reasons  after  they 
had  been  made  to  include  much  of  the  matter  in  the 
uncanonical.  The  third  gospel  avows  that  "  many  " 
previous  narratives  existed  ;  and  apart  from  all  these 
there  have  been  preserved  a  number  of  rejected 
gospels,  which  run  mainly  to  miraculous  stories. 
Some  of  these  were  long  abundantly  popular,  that  of 
"  Nicodemus  "  having  had  common  vogue  down  to  the 
Middle  Ages.  But  the  more  thoughtful  clergy  would 
soon  recognise  the  greater  value  of  documents  which 
by  their  teaching  could  impress  the  more  educated  of 
the  laity;  and  the  double  influence  of  the  super- 
naturalism  and  the  moral  appeal  went  to  create 
cohesion  throughout  the  movement. 

The  organisation,  in  turn,  operated  as  a  check  on 
the  spread  of  heresies,  which,  after  carrying  it  further 
afield,  soon  threatened  to  dissolve  the  cult  into  an 
infinity  of  mutually  repellent  groups.  Insofar, 
indeed,  as  these  appealed  to  the  more  speculative  and 
quasi-philosophic  minds,  they  were  foredoomed  to 
decay  with  the  decay  of  culture,  and  to  be  at  best  the 


OBGANISATION  AND  SACRED  BOOKS.  91 

creed  of  the  few.  Those,  in  particular,  who  carried 
anti-Semitism  to  the  point  of  discrediting  the  Jewish 
Deity,  lost  the  support  of  the  Jewish  sacred  books, 
of  which  the  mere  literary  mass  and  variety  con- 
stituted in  such  an  age  a  solid  basis  for  a  cultus. 
Yet  even  on  those  lines  the  Manichsean  cult  spread 
far  and  lived  long,  so  easy  was  it  for  any  cult  to  rise. 
Survival  lay  with  simple  concrete  myth  of  the  popular 
sort,  concrete  ritual,  and  explicit  dogma ;  and  the 
needs  of  popular  faith  kept  ever  to  the  front  the 
human  aspect  of  the  crucified  God,  even  when  he  was 
being  dogmatically  declared  to  be  at  once  distinct 
from  and  one  with  his  co-eternal  Father.  This 
indeed  was  but  one  of  the  many  irreducible  contradic- 
tions imbedded  in  the  sacred  books.  To  bring  these 
to  consistency  was  impossible ;  but  the  hierarchy 
could  set  up  formal  creeds  over  and  above  them  ;  and 
it  mattered  little  to  the  official  and  financial  continuity 
of  the  Church  that  these  creeds  were  themselves  chroni- 
cally altered.  What  was  necessary  to  success  was 
simply  some  common  standard  and  common  action. 


§  4.   Concession  and  Fixation. 

o 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  any  abnormal  sagacity 
presided  over  the  formation  of  either  the  creed  and 
canon  or  the  official  system  of  the  Church  ;  but  inso- 
far as  it  survived  it  can  be  seen  to  have  done  so  in 
virtue  alike  of  assimilation  and  of  refusal  to  assimi- 
late. Much  expansion  was  needed  to  make  an  area 
broad  enough  for  the  pagan  populace ;  and  on  the  side 
of  custom  and  myth  hardly  any  pagan  element  was 
ultimately  refused.  At  the  outset  the  great  cause  of 


92  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

strife  between  Christian  and  pagan  was  the  con- 
temptuous refusal  of  the  former  to  show  any  respect 
for  "  idols " — a  principle  derived  by  Jewry  from 
Persia,  and  passed  on  to  the  first  Jesuists.  When, 
however,  the  Christian  cult  became  that  of  the  State, 
it  of  necessity  reverted,  as  we  shall  see,  to  the 
psychology  of  the  multitude,  and  carried  the  use  of 
images  as  far  as  pagans  had  ever  done.  Even  the  so- 
called  "  animal-worship "  of  the  Egyptians  partly 
survived  in  such  usages  as  the  presence  of  the  sacred 
ox  and  ass  in  the  mystery-play  of  the  Nativity  (an 
immemorial  popular  rite,  belonging  to  sun-worship), 
in  the  adoption  of  the  "  four  zoa  "  of  the  Apocalypse 
as  the  symbols  of  the  four  evangelists,  and  in  the 
conception  of  "  the  Lamb."  Before  the  period  of 
image-worship,  too,  the  Church  had  fully  accepted 
the  compromise  by  which  countless  pagan  "  heroes  " 
and  "  geniuses,"  the  subjects  of  local  cults,  became 
enrolled  as  saints  and  martyrs,  whose  bones  had  given 
to  tombs  and  wells  and  shrines  a  sacred  virtue,  and 
whose  old  festival-days  became  part  of  the  new 
ecclesiastical  calendar.  Above  all,  there  was  finally 
forced  on  the  Church  a  cult  of  the  Mother  as 
Virgin  Goddess,  without  which  it  could  never  have 
held  its  own  against  the  great  and  well-managed 
worships  of  Isis  and  Rhea-Cybele  and  Demeter ;  since 
the  first  and  last  in  particular  aroused  in  multitudes  a 
rapture  of  exalted  devotion  such  as  was  not  psycho- 
logically possible  towards  even  a  crucified  God,  save 
insofar  as  the  emotion  of  women  worshippers  towards 
the  slain  demigod  realised  that  of  male  devotees 
towards  the  Queen  of  Heaven  and  the  Mother  and 
sustainer  of  things.  If  the  original  Jesus  of  the  myth 
had  not  had  a  mythical  mother,  it  would  have  been 


CONCESSION  AND  FIXATION.  93 

necessary  to  invent  one.      Once  invented,  her  eleva- 
tion to  the  honours  of  Isis  was  inevitable. 

No  less  necessary,  on  the  other  hand,  to  the  official 
survival  of  the  new  system  was  a  dogmatic  limit  to 
new  doctrine.  Where  concrete  myth  and  ritual 
enlarged  the  scope  of  the  cult,  freedom  of  abstract 
speculation  dissipated  its  forces  and  menaced  its  very 
existence.  All  manner  of  streams  might  usefully 
flow  into  its  current,  but  when  the  main  river 
threatened  to  break  up  into  a  hundred  searching 
rivulets  there  was  a  prospect  of  its  being  wholly 
lost  in  the  sands.  This  danger,  sometimes  charged 
solely  upon  the  Gnostics,  arose  with  the  very  first 
spread  of  the  cult ;  every  Pauline  epistle,  early  or 
late,  exhibiting  the  scope  it  gave  for  schism  and 
faction.  Mere  random  "  prophesying,"  which  it 
was  difficult  to  discountenance,  meant  endless 
novelties  of  doctrine.  At  every  stage  at  which  we 
can  trace  it,  the  early  Church  is  divided,  be  it  by 
Judaism  against  Gentilism,  faith  against  works,  Paul 
against  Apollos,  or  one  Jesus  against  another  :  the 
very  nature  of  the  forces  which  made  possible  the 
propaganda  involved  their  frequent  clash  ;  and  multi- 
tudes of  converts  were  doubtless  won  and  lost  in  the 
chances  of  sectarian  strife.  When  to  the  Jews  and 
proselytes  and  illiterates  of  the  earlier  movement 
there  began  to  be  added  speculative  Gentile  Gnostics, 
for  whom  Yahweh  was  but  one  of  many  rival  tribal 
Gods,  and  Jesus  one  of  many  competitive  slain 
Saviours,  there  came  with  them  a  species  of  heresy 
which  bade  fair  to  lull  all  schism  in  a  euthanasia  of 
universalism.  The  theosophies  of  Egypt  and  the 
East  were  alike  drawn  upon  in  the  name  of  Christism, 
and  there  resulted  endless  webs  of  grandiose 


94  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

mysticism,  in  which  the  problem  of  the  Cosmos  was 
verbally  solved  by  schemes  of  intermediary  powers 
between  deity  and  man,  and  endless  periods  of  trans- 
formation between  the  first  and  the  last  states  of 
matter.  In  these  philosophies  Jesus  was  explained 
away  or  allegorised  just  as  were  the  Gods  of  paganism, 
and  the  motive  force  of  fanatical  ill-will  against  those 
deities  on  the  score  of  their  characters  was  lost  in  a 
reconciling  symbolism.  Framed  for  brooding  minds 
that  could  not  rest  in  the  primitive  solutions  of  the 
popular  cults,  such  systems  on  the  other  hand  could 
never  attach  or  hold  the  mass  of  the  people ;  and  as 
they  were  yet  produced  on  all  hands,  the  Christian 
organisation  was  soon  forced  to  define  its  dogma  if  it 
would  keep  any  distinguishing  faith.  Insofar  as 
so-called  Gnosticism  lent  itself  obediently  to  the 
embellishment  of  the  canonical  writings,  and  the  con- 
futation of  the  heathen — as  in  the  works  of  Clement 
of  Alexandria — it  was  accepted  without  much  demur  ; 
but  all  new  or  independent  theory  was  tabooed. 
Speculative  minds  were  dangerous  things  in  a  church 
aiming  at  practical  success ;  and  they  were  assi- 
duously barred  out. 

The  conservative  process,  of  which  we  shall  trace 
the  history,  was  carried  on  partly  by  documentary 
forgeries,  partly  by  more  honest  polemic,  partly  by 
administrative  action  and  the  voting  of  creeds.  But 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  the  forgeries,  where  success- 
ful, were  the  most  central  and  decisive  forces ;  and  we 
may  still  see,  in  the  schematic  narratives  of  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles,  in  the  interpolations  of  the  Apocalypse, 
in  some  of  the  readjustments  of  the  gospel  text,  and 
in  the  more  certainly  spurious  Pauline  epistles,  how 
faction  and  fanaticism  were  fought  with  intelligent 


COSMIC  PHILOSOPHY.  95 

fraud ;  and  how  a  troublesome  popular  delusion  was 
guarded  against  by  creating  another  that  lent  itself 
to  official  ends.  The  "  true  "  creed  is  just  the  creed 
which  was  able  to  survive. 


§  5.  Cosmic  Philosophy. 

As  we  have  seen,  Gentile  philosophy  did  actually 
enter  into  the  sacred  books  of  the  new  faith,  notably 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  Logos  or  "  Word,"  which  in  the 
fourth  gospel  virtually  reshapes  the  entire  Jesuist 
system.  That  gospel,  rather  than  the  preaching  of 
Paul,  is  the  doctrinal  foundation  of  Gentile  Chris- 
tianity. In  the  synoptics  the  founder  broadly  figures 
as  a  Judaic  Messiah,  who  is  shortly  to  come  again,  at 
the  world's  end,  to  judge  the  quick  and  the  dead  ;  and 
only  for  a  community  convinced  of  the  speedy 
approach  of  doomsday  could  such  a  religion  suffice. 
In  the  Pauline  as  in  the  other  epistles  we  see  the 
belief  in  full  play ;  and  only  in  one  of  the  later 
forgeries  (2  Thess.  ii.)  is  a  caveat  inserted.  When 
the  period  loosely  specified  for  the  catastrophe  was 
clearly  passed,  and  the  Church  had  become  an  economic 
institution  like  another,  it  must  needs  present  a  religion 
for  a  permanent  world  if  it  was  to  hold  its  own  ;  and 
while  the  changing  speculations  of  the  Gnostics  must 
be  vetoed  in  the  interests  of  solidarity,  some  scheme 
of  philosophic  dogma  was  needed  which,  like  theirs, 
should  envisage  the  world  as  an  enduring  process. 
Paul's  polemic  did  but  claim  for  believing  Gentiles  a 
part  in  the  Jewish  salvation,  and  such  a  view  had 
been  reached  by  Philo  before  him.  The  fourth 
gospel,  substituting  the  Christ-sacrifice  for  the  Jewish 


%  PKIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

Passover,  and  putting  a  world-Logos  in  place  of  a 
descendant  of  David,  gave  the  theoretic  basis  of  a 
permanent  cosmopolitan  cult  analogous  to  those  of 
Egypt  and  Persia,  the  invention  of  a  gentilising 
history  of  the  first  apostles  was  a  part  of  the  same 
process  of  adaptation  ;  but  the  fourth  gospel  supplied 
the  religion  for  the  Church  which  the  official  adaptors 
sought  to  develop. 

Such  an  evolution  was  psychologically  prepared  for 
by  the  whole  drift  of  latter-day  Jewish  thought  outside 
of  Judea.  The  idea  of  "  the  Word  "  of  the  deity  as 
an  entity,  capable  of  personification,  had  long  belonged 
to  Jewish  theology  in  terms  of  many  passages  in  the 
Old  Testament,  and  is  but  one  variant  of  the  psycho- 
logical process  by  which  Brahmans  came  to  conceive 
of  the  Yedas,  and  Moslems  of  the  Koran,  as  eternal  exist- 
ences. The  Chaldaic  word  Memra  had  already  much  of 
the  mystic  significance  of  Logos,  which  meant  both 
"  word  "  and  "  reason  ";  the  books  of  Proverbs,  Job,  and 
the  Wisdom  of  Solomon  had  made  familiar  the  concep- 
tion of  a  personified  divine  Wisdom,  dwelling  beside  the 
deity ;  and  the  Alexandrian  Jew  Philo  had  made  the 
Logos  a  central  figure  in  his  theosophy.  But  in  the 
theosophies  of  Egypt  and  Persia  the  same  conception 
had  long  been  established  ;  Plato  had  made  it  current 
in  the  theosophy  of  the  Greeks,  combining  it  with  a 
mystic  doctrine  of  the  cross  ;  and  Thoth  and  Hermes 
and  Mithra  were  already  known  as  the  Logos  to  their 
worshippers.  Thus,  whether  the  fourth  gospel  were 
framed  at  Ephesus  or  at  Alexandria,  by  a  cosmopolitan 
Jew  or  by  a  Gentile  proselyte,  it  had  grounds  of  appeal 
to  every  Christist  save  the  original  Judaic  Jesuists, 
whose  monopoly  it  was  framed  to  overthrow.  It  of 
course  gave  no  coherent  philosophy  of  the  universe, 


COSMIC  PHILOSOPHY.  97 

and  merely  evaded  the  problem  of  evil,  which  the 
Gnostics  were  constantly  seeking  to  solve  ;  but  it  was 
none  the  worse  a  religious  document  for  that. 

Nonetheless,  it  needed  the  stress  of  circumstance 
to  force  it  into  its  fitting  place  in  the  new  religion. 
Despite  the  many  passages  inserted  to  bring  its 
narrative  into  harmony  with  the  other  gospels,  the 
fourth  differs  so  much  more  from  them  than  they  do 
from  each  other  that  only  the  vital  needs  of  the  cult 
in  its  struggle  for  existence  can  account  for  the  final 
adoption  of  all  four.  But  these  needs  were  com- 
pulsive, and  overrode  the  opposition  the  fourth  gospel 
evoked.  Such  a  mass  of  doctrine  purporting  to  come 
from  the  very  mouth  of  the  founder  could  not  in  any 
case  be  refused  by  such  a  community  ;  and  when  once 
the  treatise  on  such  grounds  had  been  taken  into  the 
canon,  it  played  its  part  in  paralysing  the  faculty  of 
judgment.  The  fourth  gospel  directly  excludes  the 
pretence  that  the  God-man  was  born  at  Bethlehem ; 
yet  it  was  grouped,  like  the  second,  which  ignores  the 
tale,  with  the  first  and  third,  which  circumstantially 
yet  discordantly  enounce  it.  Where  irreconcilable 
differences  on  the  most  essential  matters  of  bio- 
graphical fact  could  thus  be  let  pass,  the  widest 
divergence  of  doctrinal  idea  could  find  acceptance. 
The  two  pressures  of  predisposition  and  corporate 
interest  availed  to  override  the  difficulties  they  had 
created ;  and  the  primary  momentum  of  ignorant 
credulity  among  the  faithful  carried  all  before  it. 
Easiness  of  belief  correlated  with  proneness  to  inven- 
tion, and  the  religious  community  cohered,  as  others 
do,  by  force  of  the  gregarious  bias,  the  hostile  environ- 
ment, and  the  economic  interest. 


PAKT  IL— CHRISTIANITY  FROM  THE  SECOND 
CENTURY  TO  THE  RISE  OF  MOHAMME- 
DANISM, _^ 

CHAPTER  I. 

SCOPE   AND   CHARACTER   OF   THE    UNESTABLISHED    CHURCH. 

§  1.  Numbers  and  Inner  Life. 

WHEN  the  "  Catholic "  Christian  Church  becomes 
politically  and  socially  distinguishable  in  the  second 
century,  it  is  a  much  less  numerous  body  than  is 
pretended  in  the  literature  of  its  champions. 
Formulas  such  as  those  used  in  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  (chaps,  iii.  iv.  v.  vi.)  greatly  falsify  the  state 
of  the  case.  The  first  "  churches  "  in  the  cities  of  Asia 
Minor,  like  the  groups  addressed  by  Paul  in  his 
epistles,  were  but  small  conventicles,  meeting  in 
private  houses.  Even  in  the  fourth  century,  sixty  years 
after  Constantino's  adoption  of  the  faith,  the  church 
of  Antioch,  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  important, 
appears  to  have  numbered  only  a  fifth  part  of  the 
population  of  the  city,  or  about  one  hundred 
thousand  out  of  half-a-million.  In  the  extensive 
diocese  of  Neo-Caesarea,  in  the  third  century,  there 
were  declared  to  be  only  seventeen  believers  ;  and  in 


NUMBERS  AND  INNER  LIFE.  99 

the  church  of  Eome  itself,  in  the  same  century,  there 
were  probably  not  more  than  fifty  thousand  members 
all  told  out  of  a  population  of  over  a  million.  In 
Egypt  again  there  was  no  church  outside  Alexandria 
till  about  the  end  of  the  second  century.  Thus  the 
language  of  Justin  and  Tertullian  and  other  Fathers, 
to  the  effect  that  the  Christians  were  everywhere 
throughout  the  empire,  and  that  the  gospel  had  been 
preached  and  Jesus  prayed  to  in  every  nation,  is  mere 
rhetoric  in  the  oriental  taste.  Only  in  the  towns  of 
the  empire — though  often  in  small  towns  in  the  East 
— did  the  church  exist  at  all :  the  pagani  or  people  of 
the  rural  districts  were  so  uniformly  fixed  in  their 
beliefs  that  their  name  became  for  Christians  the 
generic  term  for  the  adherents  of  the  old  faiths ;  and 
though  there  were  some  missionary  movements  in 
Persia  and  Arabia,  the  western  provinces  were  hardly 
at  all  reached  by  the  propaganda  in  the  first  two 
centuries.  Even  in  Gaul  there  were  few  adherents  ; 
while  as  regards  Britain,  where  there  is  said  to  have 
been  a  group  at  York  in  the  third  century,  there  is 
not  to  be  found  a  single  monumental  trace  of  the 
presence  of  Christianity  during  the  four  centuries  of 
the  Roman  occupation,  though  remains  of  the 
Mithraic  cult,  which  flourished  in  the  army,  are 
frequent.  At  the  end  of  the  second  century,  then, 
probably  not  a  hundredth  part  of  the  population  even 
of  the  central  provinces  of  the  Roman  empire  was 
Christianised,  while  the  outlying  provinces  were 
practically  unaffected. 

Of  the  average  inner  life  of  the  converts  at  this 
period  it  is  possible  to  form  some  idea  by  noting  at 
once  the  current  doctrine,  the  claims  of  the  apologists, 
the  complaints  of  the  apostolic  and  later  epistles,  and 


100  SECOND  AND  THIRD  CENTURIES. 

the  tenour  and  temper  of  the  whole  literature  of  the 
Church.  Something  too  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact 
that  the  early  believers  were  mainly  easterns  even  in 
Rome  itself.  Even  on  these  data,  indeed,  it  would 
be  a  mistake  to  assume  that  any  concrete  character 
type  was  predominant ;  but  at  several  points  we  are 
entitled  to  generalise  as  between  the  Christian  move- 
ment and  its  antecedents  and  surroundings.  It  was, 
for  instance,  very  weakly  developed  on  the  intellectual 
side,  avowedly  discouraging  all  use  of  reason,  and 
limiting  the  mental  life  to  religious  interests.  Save 
for  a  certain  temperamental  and  moral  energy  in  some 
of  the  Pauline  epistles,  there  is  nothing  in  the 
propagandist  literature  of  the  early  Church  which 
bears  comparison  with  the  preceding  literature  of 
Greece  and  Rome.  The  traditions  concerning  the 
apostles  present  men  of  a  narrow  and  fanatical  vision 
and  way  of  life,  without  outlook  on  human  possibilities, 
joyless  save  by  way  of  religious  exaltation,  painfully 
engrossed  in  theological  contention  and  apocalyptic 
forecast.  The  happiest  teachers  were  perhaps  the 
least  intelligent.  Papias,  bishop  at  Hierapolis,  whom 
Eusebius  later  presents  as  having  talked  with  men 
who  had  heard  the  apostles,  is  pronounced  by  that 
historian  to  have  been  of  small  understanding ;  and 
his  ideas  of  the  millennium,  as  passed  down,  justify  the 
criticism.  Other  traditional  figures  of  the  second 
century,  as  the  bishops  Polycarp  and  Ignatius,  are  pre- 
sented mainly  in  their  character  of  hortatory  martyrs, 
the  most  advantageous  light  in  which  ungifted  men 
can  be  placed ;  and  not  a  line  ascribed  to  them  is 
above  suspicion.  Of  the  early  Christians  in  general, 
indeed,  a  transfiguring  ideal  has  been  shaped  in  terms 
of  the  aspect  of  martyrdom  and  persecution — trials 


NUMBERS  AND  INNEJl  LI  1W 

which,  by  forcing  men  and  women  back  on  the  central 
virtues  of  courage  and  constancy,  positively  ennoble 
character.  Such  a  compensating  dignity  of  endurance 
is  found  where  it  is  apt  to  be  least  expected — in  men 
and  women  long  broken  to  oriental  tyranny;  in 
Egyptian  fellaheen,  used  to  the  lash ;  in  peasants 
wont  mutely  to  toil  and  obey.  But  the  possibility  of 
such  a  correlation  does  not  alter  the  facts  of  normal 
life  for  the  types  in  question.  Ignorance  and  fanati- 
cism and  superstition  yield  their  normal  fruits  in 
normal  conditions.  And  there  is  Christian  record 
that  even  among  the  martyrs  there  were  men  of  bad 
character,  seeking  a  short  way  to  Paradise. 

Of  the  early  Christian  community  many  were 
slaves,  and  perhaps  from  three  to  five  per  cent 
paupers.  The  proportion  of  women  was  perhaps  as 
large  as  it  is  in  the  churches  of  to-day  ;  for  it  was  one 
of  the  pagan  taunts  that  to  women  the  preachers 
preferred  above  all  to  address  themselves,  and  rich 
women  members  seem  to  have  been  relatively 
numerous.  All  orders  alike  believed  fervently  in  evil 
spirits  ;  and  the  most  constant  aspect  of  their  faith 
was  as  a  protection  against  demoniacal  influence.  In 
the  service  of  the  Church  of  Korne  in  the  third  century 
there  were  forty-six  presbyters,  seven  deacons,  seven 
sub-deacons,  forty-two  acolythes  or  clerks,  and  fifty 
"  readers,"  exorcists,  and  janitors  ;  and  the  exorcists 
were  at  least  as  hard-worked  as  any  other  members  of 
the  staff.  On  the  side  of  morality,  much  stress  was 
laid  on  the  sins  of  the  flesh,  partly  because  these  were 
the  commonest,  partly  because  the  idea  of  an  intel- 
lectual ethic  had  not  arisen ;  and  while  the  Church 
was  liable  to  gusts  of  persecution  its  practice  was 
naturally  somewhat  strict.  Men  and  women  who  had 


I'OS  SECOND  AND  TRIED  CENTURIES. 

joined  the  body  mainly  for  its  alms  or  its  ayapa  were 
not  likely  to  adhere  to  it  in  times  of  trouble  ;  and  the 
very  proclamation  of  an  ascetic  standard  would 
primarily  attract  those  persons,  found  in  every  com- 
munity, who  had  a  vocation  for  asceticism.  At  almost 
any  period,  however,  such  were  to  be  found  in  the 
heretical  or  dissentient  groups  as  well  as  in  the  main 
body,  while  the  testimony  of  the  Pauline  epistles  is 
distinct  as  to  the  antinomianism  of  many  "  apostolic  " 
converts.  Some  Gnostic  sects  were  stringently 
ascetic  if  others  were  antinomian,  the  a  priori 
principle  lending  itself  alternately  to  the  doctrines 
that  the  spirit  must  mortify  the  flesh  and  that  the 
deeds  of  the  flesh  are  nothing  to  the  spirit.  Within 
the  main  body,  the  conflicting  principles  of  faith  and 
works,  then  as  later,  involved  the  same  divergences  of 
practice.  The  evidence  of  Tertullian  is  emphatic  as 
to  the  illusoriness  of  much  Christian  profession  in  his 
day  in  the  churches  of  Carthage,  where  zeal  was  at 
least  as  abundant  as  elsewhere. 

Taken  individually,  then,  an  average  Christian  of 
the  second  century  was  likely  to  be  an  unlettered 
person  of  the  "lower-middle"  or  poorer  classes; 
living  in  a  town ;  either  bitterly  averse  to  "  idols,'* 
theatres,  the  circus,  and  the  public  baths,  or  per- 
suaded that  he  ought  to  be ;  utterly  credulous  as  to 
demons  and  miracles  ;  incapable  of  criticism  as  to  the 
sacred  books  ;  neurotic  or  respectful  towards  neurosis ; 
readily  emotional  towards  the  crucified  God  and  the 
sacred  mystery  in  which  were  given  the  "  body  and 
blood " ;  devoid  alike  of  aesthetic  and  of  philosophic 
faculty  ;  without  the  thought  of  civic  duty  or  political 
theory  ;  much  given  to  his  ritual ;  capable  of  fanatical 
hatred  and  of  personal  malice ;  but  either  constitu- 


NUMBERS  AND  INNER  LIFE.  103 

tionally  sober  and  chaste  or  chronically  anxious  to  be 
so,  and  in  times  of  persecution  exalted  by  the  passion 
of  self -sacrifice  ;  perhaps  then  transiently  attaining 
even  to  the  professed  ideal  of  love  towards  enemies. 
But  the  effective  bonds  of  union  for  the  community, 
whether  in  peace  or  during  persecution,  were  rather 
the  ruling  passion  of  hostility  to  pagan  beliefs  and 
usages  and  the  eager  hope  of  "  salvation"  than  any 
enthusiasm  of  humanity,  social  or  even  sectarian. 
And,  as  an  orthodox  ecclesiastic  has  remarked,  we 
cannot  "  even  cursorily  read  the  New  Testament 
without  being  astonished  by  the  allusions  so  often  made 
to  immoral  persons  calling  themselves  Christians." 

Over  such  worshippers,  in  the  first  centuries,  pre- 
sided a  clergy  of  precarious  culture,  sometimes  marked 
by  force  of  character,  never  by  depth  or  breadth  of 
thought.  To  compare  the  Christian  writers  of  the 
ancient  world  with  the  pagan  thinkers  who  had  pre- 
ceded them  by  three  or  more  centuries  is  to  have  a 
vivid  sense  of  the  intellectual  decadence  which  had 
accompanied  the  growth  of  imperialism.  From  Plato 
to  Clement  of  Alexandria,  from  Aristotle  to  Tertullian, 
there  is  a  descent  as  from  a  great  plateau  to  arid 
plains  or  airless  valleys :  the  disparity  is  as  between 
different  grades  of  organism.  But  even  between  the 
early  Christian  fathers  and  the  pagans  near  their  own 
time  the  intellectual  and  aesthetic  contrast  is  flagrant. 
Justin  Martyr  and  Clement,  put  in  comparison  with 
either  Plutarch  or  Epictetus,  create  at  once  an 
impression  of  relative  poverty  of  soul :  the  higher 
pagan  life  is  still  the  richer  and  the  nobler ;  the 
Christian  temper  is  more  shrill  and  acrid,  even  where, 
as  in  the  case  of  Clement,  it  is  nourished  by  learning 
and  pagan  metaphysic.  Even  the  cultured  and 


104  SECOND  AND  THIRD  CENTURIES. 

relatively  liberal  Origen,  in  his  reply  to  Celsus,  is  often 
at  a  moral  disadvantage  as  against  the  pagan,  who, 
especially  when  he  passes  from  mere  polemic  on 
Jewish  lines  to  philosophic  thought,  is  distinctly  more 
masculine  and  penetrating.  So  far  from  being  less 
superstitious,  the  Christian  reverts  to  such  vulgar 
beliefs  as  that  in  the  magical  virtue  of  certain  divine 
names.  Yet  Origen,  who  was  born  of  educated 
Christian  parents,  is  almost  the  high- water  mark  of 
ancient  Christian  literature  on  the  side  of  culture  and 
mental  versatility  (185-254). 

Up  to  the  time  of  Clement  and  Origen,  then,  it  may 
be  said,  the  Christian  cult  had  won  from  paganism 
hardly  one  mind  of  any  signal  competence  ;  religious 
humanists  such  as  Plutarch  and  fine  moralists  such 
as  Marcus  Aurelius  and  Epictetus  having  gone  to 
their  graves  without  being  even  transiently  attracted 
by  it.  What  laughter  was  left  in  literature  remained 
aloof  from  religion  ;  Lucian  could  have  no  place  in 
the  church,  though  it  is  probably  his  ridicule  of  pagan 
deities  that  has  won  the  preservation  of  his  works  at 
Christian  hands.  It  is  only  when  the  disease  of 
empire  has  invaded  all  the  sources  of  the  higher  life, 
in  the  third  and  fourth  centuries,  that  the  Christian 
writers,  themselves  representing  no  intellectual 
recovery,  begin  to  be  comparable,  mind  for  mind,  with 
those  of  contemporary  paganism ;  and  even  then 
largeness  of  vision  seems  to  linger  rather  with  the 
mystics  of  the  older  way  of  thought,  as  Porphyry  and 
Plotinus,  than  with  the  bitter  polemists  of  the  newer 
faith,  as  Cyprian  and  Arnobius.  The  moral  note 
which  in  the  modern  world  is  supposed  to  be  typically 
and  primordially  Christian,  that  of  the  Imitatio  Christi, 
is  the  one  note  never  struck  by  the  Christian  Fathers, 


THE  GKOWTH  OF  THE  PRIESTHOOD.  105 

or,  if  sounded,  never  sustained.  It  is  rather  a  result 
of  medieval  brooding,  the  outcome  of  many  genera- 
tions of  cloister  life  and  of  a  settled  ecclesiastical 
order,  which  walled-in  an  abnormal  peace. 

During  those  ages  in  which  the  Christian  Church 
was  so  spreading  as  to  become  at  length  the  fit  cultus 
of  the  decaying  State,  its  history  is  almost  wholly 
one  of  internal  and  external  strifes,  conflicts  between 
the  Church  and  its  pagan  persecutors,  between  its 
literary  champions  and  pagan  criticism,  between  the 
champions  of  orthodoxy  and  the  innovating  heretics, 
between  the  partisans  of  dogmas  whose  life-and-death 
struggle  was  to  determine  what  orthodoxy  was  to  be. 
The  central  sociological  fact  is  the  existence  of  an 
organisation  with  a  durable  economic  life — durable 
because  of  ministering  to  an  enduring  demand — in  a 
society  whose  institutions  were  suffering  more  and 
more  from  economic  disease.  Of  this  organisation 
the  component  parts  united  to  resist  and  survive 
external  hostility  when  that  arose  ;  and  for  the 
command  of  its  power  and  prestige,  later,  the  con- 
flicting sections  strove  as  against  each  other.  In  the 
history  of  both  forms  of  strife  are  involved  at  once 
that  of  its  dogmas  and  that  of  its  hierarchic 
structure. 

§  2.  Growth  of  the  Priesthood. 

In  the  Jesuist  groups  of  the  first  century,  as  we 
have  seen,  there  were  "bishops"  or  overseers,  and 
other  "presbyters"  or  elders,  so  named  in  simple 
imitation  of  the  usages  of  other  Greek- speaking 
religious  societies,  Jewish  and  Gentile,  in  the  eastern 
parts  of  the  empire.  The  bishop  was  merely  the 


106  SECOND  AND  THIRD  CENTURIES. 

special  supervisor  and  distributor  of  the  "  collection," 
whether  of  money  or  of  other  gifts,  and  was  spiritually 
and  socially  on  the  same  level  with  the  presbyters  and 
deacons.  None  was  specially  ordained,  and  ordinary 
members  could  at  need  even  administer  the  eucharist. 
Teaching  or  preaching  was  not  at  first  a  special 
function  of  any  member  of  a  group,  since  any  one 
could  be  a  "  prophet  "  (unless  indeed  the  "prophets" 
were  so  named  later,  after  the  supervising  priest  or 
bishop  in  certain  Egyptian  temples,  whose  function 
was  to  distribute  revenue)  ;  but  discourses  were  for 
a  time  given  by  travelling  apostles,  who  aimed  at 
founding  new  groups,  and  who  ministered  the 
eucharist  wherever  they  went.  It  lay  in  the  nature 
of  the  case,  however,  that  the  function  of  the  bishop 
should  gain  in  moral  authority  because  of  its 
economic  importance  ;  and  that  the  informal  exhorta- 
tions or  "  prophesyings  "  of  the  early  days,  which 
were  always  apt  to  degenerate  into  the  hysterical 
glossolalia,  or  unintelligible  "  tongues,"  should  be 
superseded  by  the  regular  preaching  of  ostensibly 
qualified  men.  In  the  first  century  these  must  have 
been  few,  and  they  would  usually  be  made  the  acting 
bishops,  who  would  gradually  become  more  and  more 
identified  with  the  administration  of  the  "  mysteries," 
and  would  naturally  repel  "  lay  "  interference.  Here 
again  there  wras  pagan  precedent,  some  of  the  pagan 
societies  having  a  "  theologos,"  while  in  all  the 
"  bishop  "  had  a  certain  precedence  and  authority. 

As  congregations  grew  and  services  multiplied, 
however,  the  bishop  would  need  assistance,  and  to 
this  end  presbyters  became  officially  associated  with 
him  as  con-celebrants.  Only  gradually,  however,  did 
the  sacerdotal  spirit  take  full  possession  of  the  cult. 


GROWTH  OF  THE  PRIESTHOOD.  107 

Liturgy  was  long  a  matter  of  local  choice ;  and  it  is 
probable  that  the  complete  mystery-play  of  the 
Passion  and  Crucifixion  and  Resurrection  was  never 
performed  save  at  a  few  large  centres,  in  competition 
with  special  pagan  attractions  of  the  same  kind ;  but  a 
eucharist,  with  varying  ritual  and  hymns,  sung  by 
special  officials,  was  the  primary  function  of  every 
church.  As  numbers  and  revenue  increased,  men  of 
an  ambitious  and  administrative  turn  would  inevitably 
tend  to  enter  the  movement ;  and  the  second  century 
was  not  out  before  the  avarice  and  arrogance  of  leading 
bishops  were  loudly  complained  of.  Nonetheless, 
their  self-assertion  promoted  the  growth  of  the  sect. 
Such  men,  in  point  of  fact,  tended  to  build  up  the 
Church  as  warlike  nobles  later  built  up  the  fabric  of 
feudalism,  or  self-seeking  "captains  of  industry"  the 
special  structure  of  modern  commercial  societies. 
Righteousness  and  gentleness  and  spirituality  could 
no  more  create  a  popular  and  revenue-yielding  Church 
in  the  Roman  empire  than  they  can  to-day  create  and 
maintain  a  "paying"  industrial  organisation.  An 
early  bishop,  indeed,  needed  to  recommend  himself  to 
the  congregation,  in  order  to  be  elected ;  but  in  a  large 
town,  with  personal  magnetism  and  a  staff  of  priests, 
he  was  certain  to  become  a  determining  force  in 
church  affairs.  The  aspiring  priest  looked  forward 
to  a  bishopric  for  himself ;  and  in  an  illiterate  congre- 
gation there  could  be  no  effectual  resistance  to  official 
assumptions  which  were  made  with  any  tact.  Thus 
were  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  rapidly  duplicated. 

In  an  age  of  unbounded  credulity  the  invitation  to 
deceit  was  constant ;  and,  while  credulity  itself  means 
the  faculty  for  innocent  false  witness,  it  could  not  be 
but  that  frauds  were  common  in  matters  of  miracle- 


108  SECOND  AND  THIRD  CENTURIES. 

working  of  all  kinds.  To  suppose  that  all  the 
miracle- stories  arose  in  good  faith  when  the  deliberate 
manufacture  of  false  documents  and  calculated  tam- 
perings  with  the  genuine  were  a  main  part  of  the 
literary  life  of  the  Church,  is  to  ignore  all  probability. 
The  systematic  forgery  and  interpolation  of  "  Sibylline 
Books,"  by  way  of  producing  pagan  testimonies  and 
prophecies  on  the  side  of  Christism,  is  to  be  regarded 
as  a  clerical  industry  of  the  second  century.  A 
bishop's  business  was  to  forward  the  fame  and 
interests  of  his  Church;  and  in  Ambrose's  transparent 
account  of  his  discovery  of  miracle-working  relics  of 
saints  at  Milan  in  the  fourth  century  we  have  a  typical 
instance  of  the  methods  by  which  the  prestige  of  the 
faith  was  advanced.  Ambrose  was  above  and  not  below 
the  moral  average  of  previous  bishops.  To  find  what 
might  pass  for  the  bones  and  relics  of  saints  and 
martyrs,  to  frame  false  tales  concerning  them,  to  win 
illiterate  and  poor  pagans  to  the  Church  by  imitating 
their  festivals  and  ceremonies — these  were,  by  the 
grieving  admission  of  many  Christian  historians, 
among  the  common  activities  of  the  Church  from  the 
second  or  third  century  onwards ;  and  the  priesthood 
were  the  natural  agents  of  the  work.  By  the  very 
fact,  however,  that  there  were  special  reputations  for 
wonder-working,  as  that  of  Gregory  Thaumaturgus  in 
the  third  century,  we  are  reminded  that  the  pretence 
was  not  universal.  Imposture  is  a  variation  like 
another  ;  and  there  must  always  have  been  a  good  pro- 
portion of  normally  honest  minds,  however  unintelligent 
and  uncritical.  It  was  their  incapacity  that  evoked 
fraud.  Some,  on  the  other  hand,  have  recorded  how 
the  bones  of  executed  robbers  were  at  times  made  to 
do  duty  as  relics  of  martyrs. 


GROWTH  OF  THE  PRIESTHOOD.  109 

On  one  side  the  character  of  the  early  as  of  the 
later  clergy  of  the  "  Catholic"  Church  has  suffered 
severely  from  their  own  affirmation  of  a  primitive 
theory  of  morals  to  which  they  could  not  conform. 
In   an   age   of  lessening   science  and  freedom,  with 
growing  superstition,  the  barbarian  ideal  of  asceticism 
gained  ground  like  other  delusions.     The  idea  that  by 
pltysical   self-mortification    men    attain    magical    or 
intercessory  power  in  spiritual  things — an  idea  found 
in  all  ancient  religions,  and  enforced  in  numerous 
pagan  priesthoods — was  imposed  to  some  extent  on 
Christism  from  the  first,  and  became  more  and  more 
coercive  as  the  cult  passed  out  of  Jewish  hands.     The 
average  presbyter  of  the  second  century,  accordingly, 
won  his  repute  for  sanctity  in  many  cases  by  pro- 
fessing celibacy,  which  in  a  large  number  of  cases 
was  too  hard  for  him  to  maintain ;  and  between  his 
own  unhappy  ideal  and  the  demand  of  the  crowd  that 
he  should  fulfil  it,  his  life  became  in  general  a  decep- 
tion.     In    these   matters   the    multitude   is    always 
preposterously  righteous.     Aztecs  in  the  pre-Christian 
period,  we  know,  were  wont  to  put  to  death  professed 
ascetics  who  lapsed  ;  and  the  normal  denunciation  of 
priestly  immorality  in  Europe  in  the   Middle  Ages 
seems  rarely  to  have  been  checked  by  the  thought  that 
the  priest's  error  consisted  in  taking  up  a  burden  he 
could  not  bear.     That  priests  ought  to  be  celibate  the 
average  priest- taught  layman  never  doubted.     Hence 
a  premium  on  hypocrisy  in  the   period   of  church- 
creation.       An   artificial    ethic   created   an   artificial 
crime,  and  Christian  morality  evolved  demoralisation. 
In  the   second   century  began  the  practice   of  open 
priestly  concubinage,  often  on  the  naive  pretence  of  a 
purely  spiritual  union.      Denounced  periodically  by 


110  SECOND  AND  THIKD  CENTUBIES. 

bishops  and  councils  for  hundred  of  years,  it  was 
never  even  ostensibly  checked  in  the  period  of  the 
empire ;  and  the  later  discipline  of  the  Western 
Church  did  but  drive  the  symptom  beneath  the  surface 
to  form  a  worse  disorder. 

In  the  Roman  period  no  machinery  existed  by  which 
celibacy  could  be  enforced.  Councils  varied  in  their 
stringency  on  the  subject,  and  many  bishops  were 
capable  of  voting  for  a  rule  to  which  they  did  not  in 
private  conform.  As  for  the  bishopric  of  Home,  it 
had  at  that  time  only  a  ceremonial  primacy  over  the 
other  provinces.  In  the  second  century,  Bishop  Victor 
of  Rome  is  recorded  to  have  passed  sentence  of 
excommunication  on  the  easterns  who  would  not 
conform  to  his  practice  in  the  observation  of  Easter  ; 
but  his  authority  was  defied,  and  his  successors  do 
not  seem  even  to  have  asserted  it  in  any  similar 
degree  for  centuries.  In  the  third  century,  Bishop 
Cyprian  of  Carthage,  the  first  zealous  prelatist  in  the 
literature  of  the  Church,  claimed  merely  primacy, 
without  superior  authority,  for  the  chief  bishoprics, 
and  for  Rome  over  the  rest.  All  bishops  he  held  to 
be  spiritually  equal — as  indeed  all  presbyters,  bishops 
included.  This  held  good  theoretically  as  late  as  the 
fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  with  the  exception  that  by 
that  time  the  bishop  alone  had  the  right  to  appoint 
to  Church  offices — originally  the  function  of  the  whole 
community.  But  alike  the  internal  and  the  external 
conditions  made  for  the  creation  of  a  hierarchy. 
When  in  the  third  century  the  puritan  party  in  the 
Church  at  Rome  sought  to  appoint  Novatian  as  its 
separate  bishop,  alongside  of  another,  the  bishops  in 
the  provinces,  led  by  Cyprian,  zealously  resisted,  and 
secured  the  principle  that  no  town  should  have  more 


THE  GNOSTIC  MOVEMENT.  Ill 

than  one  bishop.  In  other  ways  the  bishops  neces- 
sarily gathered  power.  To  them  had  soon  to  be 
relegated  the  right  of  admitting  or  refusing  new 
members ;  and  when  there  arose  the  question  of  the 
treatment  of  those  who  lapsed  in  a  time  of  persecution, 
there  was  no  way  to  secure  uniformity  of  method  save 
by  leaving  the  matter  to  the  bishops,  who  in  the  main 
agreed  on  a  rule.  For  such  uniformity  they  naturally 
strove  in  the  days  of  danger;  and  the  Church  Synods, 
which  began  in  the  second  century  and  developed  in 
the  third,  were  tolerably  unanimous  up  to  the  time  of 
the  Establishment  of  the  Church  under  Constantine 
(313).  It  was  when  the  Church  as  a  whole  had  no 
longer  cause  to  fear  the  heathen  that  the  worst  strifes 
arose. 

§  3.  The  Gnostic  Movement  in  the  Second 
Century. 

In  New  Testament  Greek,  the  same  word  has  to 
stand  for  "  sect  "  and  "  heresy,"  a  fact  premonitory 
of  what  must  happen  to  every  new  idea  in  religion. 
Any  process  of  reasoning  whatever  must  have  led  to 
differences  of  opinion  among  the  converts  of  Paul  or 
of  the  Pauline  epistles  ;  and  such  differences,  leading 
necessarily,  among  zealots,  to  animosities,  are  among 
the  first  phenomena  of  Christism.  As  we  have  seen, 
the  chief  "  heresies  "  of  the  first  century,  stigmatised 
as  such  by  the  later  Church,  were  really  independent 
cults  older  than  itself ;  and  there  is  reason  to  think 
that  the  "  Nicolitaines  "  execrated  in  the  Apocalypse 
were  really  the  followers  of  Paul.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  second  century,  again,  the  first  heretics  on 
record  are  the  Elcesaites,  who,  however,  are  obviously 


112  SECOND  AND  THIRD  CENTURIES. 

not  an  offshoot  from  the  Christists,  but  a  separate 
body,  their  Christ  being  a  gigantic  spirit  and  their 
doctrine  a  cluster  of  symbolisms.  It  is  with  the  so- 
called  Gnostics,  the  claimants  to  a  higher  Gnosis  or 
knowledge,  that  heresy  begins  in  Gentile  Christianity ; 
and  as  some  of  these  are  already  in  evidence  in  the 
Pauline  epistles,  and  had  interpolated  the  synoptics 
(Mt.  xiii.,  Mk.  iv.,  Lk.  xii.  49,  ff.),  to  say  nothing  of 
framing  the  fourth  gospel,  they  may  fairly  be  reckoned 
among  "  the  first  Christians."  Ere  long,  however, 
they  begin  clearly  to  differentiate  from  the  Christism 
of  the  New  Testament. 

If  the  early  Gnostic  systems  be  compared  with  that 
of  Paul,  they  will  be  found  to  have  rather  more  in 
common  with  it  than  with  the  Judaic  Jesuism  from 
which  he  ostensibly  broke  away.  It  is  thus  not 
unlikely  that  their  Christism,  like  his,  is  older  than 
that  of  the  gospels,  which  is  primarily  of  Jewish 
manufacture.  The  "  Simonians  "  of  Samaria  have 
every  appearance  of  being  non-Jewish  Christists 
"  before  Christ"  ;  and  the  later  Gnostics  have  several 
Samaritan  affinities.  Like  Paul,  they  have  no  Jesuine 
biography;  but  whereas  he  holds  by  an  actual  man 
Jesus,  however  nondescript,  they  usually  declare  out- 
right for  a  mere  divine  phantom,  bearing  a  human 
semblance,  but  uncontaminated  by  mixture  with 
matter,  which  was  the  Gnostic  symbol  for  all  evil. 
They  did  but  attach  the  name  of  the  Christos,  and  the 
hope  of  salvation,  to  a  general  theosophy,  as  Paul 
attached  it  to  Judaism  ;  and  their  great  preoccupation 
was  to  account  formally  for  the  existence  of  evil, 
which  they  commonly  figured  as  either  an  evil  power 
or  an  essential  quality  of  matter,  forever  opposed  to 
the  principle  of  good.  Hence  the  allusion  to  the 


THE  GNOSTIC  MOVEMENT.  113 

"  oppositions  of  science  falsely  so-called  " — that  is, 
"the  antitheses  of  the  Gnosis" — in  the  Pauline 
epistle.  But  they  varied  somewhat  in  details  according 
to  their  environment,  being  roughly  divisible  into  two 
groups — Asiatic  and  Egyptian. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  second  century  those  of 
Syria  are  identified  with  the  teaching  of  Saturninus 
of  Antioch,  in  whose  theory  a  good  God  had  made  the 
seven  angels,  who  in  turn  made  the  world  and 
created  a  low  type  of  animal  man  in  God's  image, 
whom,  however,  God  compassionately  endowed  with  a 
reasonable  soul.  Of  the  seven  angels  one  was  left  to 
rule  the  world,  and  figured  as  God  of  the  Jews ;  but 
the  others  competed  with  him ;  and  Satan,  the  chief 
evil  power,  made  a  race  of  men  with  an  evil  soul. 
Thereupon  the  Supreme  God  sent  his  son  as  Jesus 
Christ,  human  only  in  seeming,  to  bring  men  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  Father  and  defeat  the  rebel  angels. 
Another  Syrian,  Bardesanes,  who  lived  in  the  reign  of 
Marcus  Aurelius,  was  less  anti-Jewish,  and  made  the 
one  God  the  creator  of  the  world  and  of  man,  who 
was  at  first  ethereal  and  pure,  but  seduced  and  so 
degraded  to  the  form  of  flesh  by  the  Adversary ;  the 
Christ's  function  being  to  secure  a  higher  future  life 
to  those  who  accept  him.  From  both  points  of  view, 
mortification  of  the  flesh  was  a  primary  duty — all  the 
carnal  instincts  being  evil — and  Jesus  on  the  same 
ground  was  denied  bodily  existence.  Always  the  effort 
is  to  account  for  evil  as  involved  in  matter,  the  work 
not  of  the  Supreme  God,  but  of  a  subordinate  power 
who  will  be  vanquished.  Thus  Tatian,  a  pupil  of 
Justin  Martyr  and  contemporary  with  Saturninus, 
makes  the  world-creator  a  subordinate  God,  and  seems 
to  have  derived  Judaism  and  the  gospel  similarly  from 

i 


114  SECOND  AND  THIED  CENTURIES. 

inferior  deities.  Some,  as  Bardesanes  and  Tatian, 
held  by  a  bodily  resurrection ;  others,  as  Saturninus 
and  Cerdo  (fl.  140),  stressed  the  anti-material  principle 
and  denied  that  the  resurrection  could  be  in  bodily 
form.  On  such  an  issue,  of  course,  it  was  easy  to 
compromise  in  the  concept  of  a  "  spiritual  body,"  the 
same  to  the  eye  as  the  real  body,  but  impalpable  to 
touch — in  short,  the  "  spirit "  of  all  ages. 

It  is  reasonable  to  infer  that  the  Gnostic  systems 
were  suggested  by  the  spectacle  of  the  earthly 
Governments  around  them,  no  less  than  by  the 
previous  theologies.  Even  as  the  Autocrator  reigned 
without  governing,  and  the  evils  of  misgovernment 
were  chargeable  on  proconsuls,  so,  it  was  thought,  the 
head  of  the  universe,  the  Pantocrator,  could  not  be 
implicated  in  the  evil  wrought  under  him.  Such  a 
conception  seems  to  have  first  arisen  in  the  great 
monarchies  of  the  East.  It  followed,  however,  that 
as  some  satraps  and  proconsuls  governed  well,  there 
might  be  good  subordinate  deities ;  and  in  the  system 
of  Basilides  the  Egyptian,  who  belonged  to  the 
rjlliant  reign  of  Hadrian,  the  attribute  of  goodness  is 
graded  endlessly,  down  to  the  angels  of  the  365th 
heaven,  who  made  this  world  and  its  inhabitants.  As 
in  the  system  of  Saturninus,  God  gives  these  a 
reasonable  soul,  but  the  angels  rebel ;  and  their  chief, 
who  becomes  God  of  the  Jews,  draws  on  that  nation 
the  hatred  of  all  others  by  his  arrogance.  Egyptian 
Gnosticism  thus  bore  the  stamp  of  the  old  Egyptian 
pantheism,  its  every  power  emanating  from  the 
Unbegotten  One;  while  the  Asiatic  systems  embody 
in  some  form  the  Mazdean  principle  of  two  opposed 
powers,  of  which  the  worse  is  only  ultimately  to  be 
defeated.  Egyptian  precedent  explains  also  the 


THE  GNOSTIC  MOVEMENT.  115 

countless  generations  of  the  Gnostic  systems  of 
Alexandria.  As  in  Egyptian  history  dynasty  followed 
on  dynasty,  and  as  in  the  pantheon  God  was  begotten 
of  God,  so  in  the  system  of  Basilides  the  Unbegotten 
produces  from  himself  Nous,  Mind ;  which  produces 
the  Logos ;  which  produces  Phronesis,  Judgment ; 
which  produces  Sophia  and  Dynamis,  Wisdom  and 
Power  ;  and  these  last  in  turn  produce  angels,  who  in 
turn  reproduce  others  down  to  the  365th  grade.  The 
system  of  Valentinus,  assigned  to  the  period  of 
Antoninus  Pius,  frames  fresh  complications,  partly 
suggestive  of  an  immemorial  bureaucracy  which  had 
duplicated  itself  in  the  heavens,  partly  of  an  a  priori 
psychology  which  sought  to  explain  the  universe,  now 
by  first  principles,  after  the  fashion  of  the  early 
mythology  of  Rome,  now  by  adaptations  of  the  current 
theosophy. 

In  the  hands  of  Valentinus  religion  becomes  an 
imbroglio  which  only  an  expert  could  master;  and  the 
functions  of  the  Christ  in  particular  are  a  mere  tangle 
of  mystery.  Nous,  the  first  of  many  "  ^Eons,"  is  the 
"  only  begotten "  Son,  his  mother  being  Ennoia, 
Thought ;  yet  with  him  is  born  Truth  ;  and  these 
three  with  the  Father  make  a  first  Tetrad.  Then  Nous 
produces  the  Logos  and  Life ;  which  beget  Man  and 
the  Church  ;  which  two  pairs  beget  more  .Eons ;  and 
so  on.  In  a  later  stage,  after  a  "  fall,"  Nous  begets 
the  Christos  and  the  Holy  Spirit ;  while  later  still  the 
Moris  produce  the  Mou  Jesus,  Sophia  and  Horos 
playing  a  part  in  the  evolution.  Such  a  maze,  though 
it  is  said  to  have  had  many  devotees,  could  not  possibly 
be  the  creed  of  a  popular  Church,  even  in  Egypt;  and 
wherever  the  gospels  went  their  ostensibly  concrete 
Jesus  held  his  own  against  such  spectral  competition. 


116  SECOND  AND  TRIED  CENTUKIES. 

The  systems  which  made  Jesus  non-human  and  those 
which  made  of  him  an  elusive  abstraction  were  alike 
disadvantaged  as  against  that  which  declared  him  to 
have  been  born  of  woman  and  to  have  suffered  the 
last  agony  for  the  sons  of  men.  Women  could  weep 
for  the  crucified  Man-God  as  they  had  imineinorially 
done  for  Adonis  and  Osiris :  they  could  not  shed  tears 
for  a  phantasmagoric  series  of  Nous — Logos — Christ 
— .ZEons — Jesus,  begetting  and  begotten. 

Other  Gnostics,  still  making  mystical  pretensions, 
were  content  to  represent  Jesus  as  a  superior  human 
being  born  of  Joseph  and  Mary  in  the  course  of 
nature.  Carpocrates  of  Alexandria,  who  so  taught  in 
the  reign  of  Hadrian,  had  a  large  following.  Such 
tolerance  of  "materialism,"  however,  brought  on  the 
sect  charges  of  all  manner  of  sensuality;  and  there  is 
categorical  record  that,  following  Plato,  they  sought 
to  practise  community  of  women.  Similarly  the 
Basilidians  were  charged  with  regarding  all  bodily 
appetites  as  indifferent,  their  founder  having  set  his 
face  against  the  glorification  of  virginity,  and  taught 
that  Jesus  was  not  absolutely  sinless,  since  God  could 
never  permit  an  innocent  being  to  be  punished. 
There  is  no  proof,  however,  that  any  sect-founder  was 
openly  antinomian  ;  and  while  license  doubtless 
occurred  in  many,  we  have  the  evidence  of  the 
Pauline  epistles  that  it  could  rise  in  the  heart  of  the 
primitive  Church  as  easily  as  in  any  sect.  In  the 
same  way,  whatever  might  be  the  doctrine  of  particular 
sections,  it  may  be  taken  as  certain  that  the  charge  of 
bowing  before  persecution,  cast  at  some,  held  partly 
true  of  nearly  all. 

Systems  such  as  the  bulk  of  those  above  described, 
drawing  as  they  did  on  any  documents  rather  than 


THE  GNOSTIC  MOVEMENT.  117 

the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  are  obviously  not 
so  much  Christian  schisms  as  differentiations  from 
historic  Christianity — developments,  in  most  cases,  of 
an  abstract  Christism  on  lines  not  merely  Gentile  but 
based  on  Gentile  religions,  as  against  the  Jewish. 
Broadly  speaking,  therefore,  they  tended  to  disappear 
from  the  Christist  field,  inasmuch  as  paganism  had 
other  deities  better  suited  to  the  part  of  the  Gnostic 
Logos.  The  intermediate  type,  bodiless  at  best,  must 
die  out.  Gnosticism  had  not  only  no  canon  of  its 
own,  but  no  thought  of  one :  while  the  fashion  lasted, 
every  decade  saw  a  new  system,  refining  on  the  last 
and  multiplying  its  abstractions,  till  the  very  term 
gnosis  must  have  become  a  byword.  Success,  as  has 
been  said  above,  must  remain  with  the  simple  and 
concrete  system,  especially  if  that  were  organised  ; 
and  the  Gnostics  of  the  second  century  attempted  no 
general  organisation.  Yet  Gnosticism  left  a  lasting 
impress  on  Christianity.  In  its  earlier  stages,  as  we 
have  seen,  it  modified  the  gospels ;  and  after  it  had 
evolved  away  from  the  gospel  basis  it  left  an  influence 
on  the  more  philosophically-minded  writers  of  the 
Church,  notably  Clement  of  Alexandria,  who  is  as 
openly  anxious  to  approve  himself  a  "  good  Gnostic  " 
as  to  found  on  the  accepted  sacred  books  of  the 
Church.  Deriving  as  it  partly  did  from  the  Jewish 
Platonist  Philo,  it  brought  into  the  Church  his  fashion 
of  reducing  Biblical  narratives  to  allegories — a  course 
much  resorted  to  not  only  by  Origen  but  by  Augustine, 
and  very  necessary  for  the  defence  of  Hebrew  tales 
against  pagan  criticism.  Further,  the  regular  practice 
of  the  Church  in  the  matter  of  separating  catechumens 
from  initiates  was  an  adoption  of  the  Gnostic  principle 
of  esoteric  knowledge. 


118  SECOND  AND  THIKD  CENTURIES. 

In  yet  other  ways,  however,  Gnosticism  influenced 
early  Christianity.  It  was  the  Gnostics  who  first  set 
up  in  it  literary  habits  :  they  were  the  first  to  multiply 
documents  of  all  kinds ;  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that 
their  early  additions  to  the  gospels  gave  a  stimulus  to 
its  expansion  on  other  lines.  They  were,  in  short,  the 
first  to  introduce  a  tincture  of  letters  and  art  into  the 
cult ;  and  it  was  their  spirit  that  shaped  the  fourth 
gospel,  which  gave  to  Christism  the  only  philosophical 
elements  it  ever  possessed.  They  are  not  indeed  to 
be  regarded  as  having  cultivated  philosophy  to  any 
good  purpose,  though  they  passed  on  some  of  the 
philosophic  impulse  to  the  later  PlatonistsV  Rather 
the  average  Gnostic  is  to  be  conceived  as  a  leisured 
dilettante  in  an  age  of  learned  ignorance  and  foiled 
intelligence,  lending  an  eager  ear  to  new  mysticisms, 
as  so  many  half-cultured  idlers  are  seen  still  doing  in 
xfitt  own  day.  J  They  cared  as  much  for  abracadabral 
amulets,  apparently,  as  for  theories ;  and  their  zeal 
for  secret  knowledge  had  in  it  something  of  the  spirit 
of  class  exclusiveness,  and  even  of  personal  arrogance. 
It  would  seem  as  if,  when  tyrannies  in  the  ancient 
world  made  an  end  of  the  old  moral  distinctions  of 
classes,  men  instinctively  caught  at  new  ways  of  being 
superior  to  their  fellows — for  the  spirit  of  Gnosticism 
arose  among  the  later  Greek  pagans,  who  here  followed 
the  lead  of  Egyptian  priests,  as  well  as  among 
Samaritans  and  Grecised  Jews.  At  most  we  may  say 
of  the  Gnostics  that  they  were  much  more  concerned 
than  the  orthodox  to  frame  a  complete  and  consistent 
theistic  theory  of  things,  and  that  in  their  learned- 
ignorant  way  they  sought  to  walk  by  reason  as  well  as 
by  faith.  Necessarily  they  were  in  a  minority.  It 
was,  however,  their  theoretic  bent,  surviving  in  the 


THE  GNOSTIC  MOVEMENT.  119 

gospel-reading  Church,  that  determined  the  dogmatic 
development  of  the  Christist  creed.  Their  recoil  from 
the  conception  of  a  Saviour-God  in  a  human  body 
comes  out  in  the  later  debates  and  creeds  as  in  the 
fourth  gospel ;  and  if  the  final  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
be  not  truly  Gnostic,  it  is  because  the  Gnostics 
showed  more  concern  for  plausibility,  and  never  aimed 
at  tying  thought  down  forever  to  a  plainly  self-contra- 
dictory formula.  Much  of  their  movement  probably 
survived  in  Manichaeism,  which,  though  sufficiently 
dogmatic,  never  flaunted  such  propositions  as  those  of 
the  Nicene  creed,  and  was  a  critical  thorn  in  the  flesh 
of  the  Church.  Even  their  amulets  seem  to  have 
had  a  Christian  vogue  ;  and  the  worship  of  angels, 
which  began  to  flourish  among  Catholics  in  the  fourth 
century,  seems  to  have  been  a  reflex  of  their  teaching. 
In  some  respects,  finally,  the  modern  Church  has 
confusedly  reverted  to  their  view  of  a  future  state. 
While  the  "  orthodox "  Christians  of  the  second 
century  believed  that  souls  at  death  went  to  the  under- 
world, to  be  raised  with  the  body  for  the  approaching 
millennium,  or  thousand-years  reign  of  Christ,  the 
Gnostics,  scouting  the  millennium  as  a  grossly  mate- 
rialistic conception,  held  that  at  death  the  soul 
ascended  to  heaven.  That  appears  to  be  the  pre- 
vailing fancy  among  Protestants  at  the  present  day, 
though  men  have  grown  cautious  of  formal  dicta  on 
the  subject. 

§  4.  Marcionism  and  Montanism. 

Apart  from  Gnosticism,  the  Church  of  the  second 
century  was  affected  by  certain  heretical  or  sectarian 
movements  which  centred  round  single  teachers  of 


120  SECOND  AND  THIED  CENTURIES. 

an  influential  sort,  in  particular  Marcion  of  Sinope 
and  Montanus,  who  became  the  founders  of  some- 
thing like  separate  churches.  Marcion,  who  was 
a  disciple  of  the  Gnostic  Cerdo,  and  like  him 
flourished  in  the  reign  of  Antoninus  Pius,  held  by 
some  of  the  main  Gnostic  theories,  but  differed 
from  the  Gnostics  in  general  in  that  he  founded 
solely  on  New  Testament  writings  and  did  not 
absolutely  oppose  Judaism.  In  his  system  the 
Supreme  God,  who  is  Good,  creates  a  Demiurge  or 
world-maker,  who  is  merely  Just  or  legalist,  the  God 
of  the  Jews ;  while  Satan,  the  offspring  of  Matter, 
governs  the  heathens.  Only  the  Christians  are  ruled 
by  the  Good  God,  who  is  first  revealed  to  men  solely 
by  the  Christ.  It  was  in  this  way  that  he  applied 
the  Gnostic  principle  of  "oppositions"  or  "anti- 
thesis," in  a  work  bearing  that  title.  His  ethic 
appears  to  have  been  a  sectarian  version  of  that 
of  Bardesanes,  who  had  denned  the  good  as  those 
who  did  good  even  to  the  wicked ;  the  just  as  those 
who  did  good  only  to  the  good ;  and  the  wicked  as 
those  who  did  evil  even  to  the  good.  It  does  not 
seem  to  have  occurred  to  Marcion  that  in  classing  all 
pagans  as  outside  of  the  pale  of  goodness  he  was 
stultifying  his  own  avowed  principle  of  divine  love 
and  mercy ;  but  in  this  respect  at  least  he  was  not 
heretical,  for  all  who  bore  the  Christian  name  agreed 
in  limiting  salvation  to  Christists,  and  dooming  all 
other  men  to  hell-fire. 

That  he  was  a  fanatic  of  exceptional  force  of 
character  is  proved  by  the  facts  that  (1)  it  was  he  who 
forced  on  the  Church  the  problem  of  a  canon,  he 
being  the  first  to  form  one,  by  way,  as  he  explained, 
of  excluding  Jewish  documents  and  Jewish  interpola- 


MAKCIONISM  AND  MONTANISM.  121 

tions  in  the  gospel  and  the  Pauline  epistles ;  and 
that  (2)  he  was  able  to  form  a  separate  organisation, 
which  subsisted  for  centuries,  with  some  variations  in 
doctrine,  alongside  of  the  "  catholic  "  Church,  being 
heard  of  as  late  as  the  seventh  century.  The  contro- 
versies he  set  up  affected  the  whole  literature  of  the 
Church  for  generations  ;  and  though  it  was  a  point  of 
honour  with  the  orthodox  to  accuse  him  of  corrupting 
the  texts  as  well  as  the  faith,  it  is  finally  held  that 
some  of  his  readings  of  the  third  gospel,  which 
he  specially  favoured,  are  really  the  original  ones. 
Inasmuch,  however,  as  he  laid  stress  on  asceticism,  to 
the  extent  of  prohibiting  marriage,  he  necessarily 
failed  to  attract  the  multitude,  though  his  was  one 
of  the  influences  which  fostered  ascetic  ideas  within 
the  Church  from  his  time  onwards. 

The  movement  of  Montanus,  known  also  as  the 
Cataphrygian  heresy,  has  two  aspects — that  of  a  sect 
founded  by  a  zealot  of  strong  personality,  who  felt 
that  he  had  special  inner  light  and  claimed  to  be 
inspired  by  the  Paraclete  promised  in  the  gospel,  and 
that  of  a  general  reaction  against  officialism  in  the 
Church,  somewhat  in  the  spirit  of  the  Quakers  of  the 
Reformation  period.  It  stressed  all  the  extremer 
social  tendencies  of  the  early  Church,  the  prediction 
of  the  end  of  the  world,  the  impropriety  of  marriage 
and  child-bearing  in  prospect  of  the  catastrophe,  the 
multiplication  of  fasts,  the  absolute  condemnation  of 
second  marriages,  the  renunciation  of  earthly  joys  in 
general.  Christ,  said  Montanus,  had  withdrawn  the 
^indulgences  granted  by  Moses ;  and  through  himself 
the  Paraclete  cancelled  those  given  by  Paul.  Thus 
true  religion,  having  had  its  infancy  under  Judaism, 
and  its  youth  under  the  gospel,  had  reached  maturity 


122  SECOND  AND  THIKD  CENTUKIES. 

under  the  Holy  Spirit  (an  idea  revived  a  thousand 
years  later  in  Catholic  Europe).  Hardness  of  heart 
had  reigned  till  Christ ;  weakness  of  flesh  till  the 
Paraclete.  A  special  feature  of  the  Montanist  schism 
— which  spread  far,  and  ultimately  absorbed  Tertullian, 
who  for  a  time  had  opposed  it — was  the  association  of 
the  founder  with  two  wealthy  women  of  rank,  Maximilla 
and  Priscilla,  who  endowed  the  movement.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  this  special  growth  of  asceticism  took  its 
rise  in  Phrygia,  one  of  the  regions  specially  associated 
in  pagan  antiquity  with  sensuous  and  orgiastic  worship. 
It  would  seem  as  if  an  age  of  indulgence  led  in  natural 
course  to  a  neurotic  recoil.  In  any  case  it  is  neurosis 
that  speaks  in  the  ascetic  polemic  of  Tertullian,  who 
became  a  typical  Montanist. 

Montanism,  it  has  been  said,  was  "  all  but  vic- 
torious ";  but  its  victory  was  really  impossible  in  the 
circumstances.  It  would  have  meant  arresting  the 
growth  of  Christism  to  the  form  of  a  State  Church 
by  depriving  it  of  all  popular  attraction ;  and  the 
vested  interests  were  too  great  to  permit  of  such  a 
renunciation.  The  movement  may  be  loosely  com- 
pared to  the  secession  of  more  rigid  bodies  from  the 
relaxing  sects  of  Methodism  and  Calvinism  in  our 
own  time  :  voluntary  austerity  must  always  be  in  a 
minority.  A  Church  which  absolutely  refused  to 
retain  or  readmit  any  who  committed  a  cardinal  sin 
or  lapsed  during  persecution — saying  they  might  be 
saved  by  God's  grace,  but  must  not  be  allowed  human 
forgiveness — was  doomed  to  the  background.  But 
Montanism,  appealing  as  it  did  to  an  ideal  of  holiness 
which  the  average  Christian  dared  not  repudiate, 
influenced  the  main  body,  especially  through  the 
writings  of  such  a  valued  polemist  as  Tertullian,  who 


MABCIONISM  AND  MONTANISM.  123 

taunted  them  with  being  inferior  even  to  many  pagans 
in  the  matter  of  chastity  and  monogamy.  The  main 
body  was  not  to  be  metamorphosed ;  but  it  read  the 
lesson  as  inculcating  the  need  for  at  least  priestly 
celibacy.  Every  notable  "heresy"  so-called  seems 
thus  to  have  left  its  mark  on  the  Church. 

What  above  all  is  proved  by  the  movements  of 
Marcion  and  Montanus  is  the  power  of  organisation 
in  that  period  to  maintain  a  sect  with  sacred  books  of 
any  kind.  They  had  learned  the  lesson  taken  from 
Judaism  by  the  first  Christists,  and  proceeded  to  show 
that  just  as  organised  Jesuism  could  live  apart  from 
Judaism  in  the  Gentile  field,  so  new  Christist  sects 
could  live  apart  from  the  orthodox  Church  when  once 
separation  was  forced  on  them.  Montanism,  like 
Mareionism,  survived  for  centuries,  and  seems  to  have 
been  at  length  suppressed  only  by  violence  on  the 
part  of  the  Christian  emperors,  who  could  persecute 
more  effectually  than  pagans  ever  did,  having  the 
Church  as  an  instrument.  In  the  face  of  such  develop- 
ments, and  still  more  in  view  of  the  later  success  of 
Maniehaeism,  which,  as  we  shall  see,  applied  still 
better  the  principle  of  organisation,  there  can  be  no 
longer  any  difficulty  in  accounting  for  the  rise  of 
Christism  on  purely  natural  grounds.  Given  the 
recognition  of  a  few  essential  conditions,  the  creation 
of  a  sect  was  a  very  simple  and  facile  matter. 
Montanism  and  Manichseism  successively  endured  as 
much  persecution,  pagan  and  Christian,  as  the  Chris- 
tian Church  ever  did  ;  and  it  was  only  the  essential 
unpopularity  of  the  ideals  of  Montanism  that  per- 
mitted of  its  suppression  as  a  sect  even  by  the 
persecuting  established  Church.  Manichaeism,  as  we 
shall  see,  was  almost  insuppressible,  even  when 


124  SECOND  AND  THIED  CENTURIES. 

political  changes  had  given  the  Church  a  power  of 
centralisation  and  coercion  which  otherwise  could 
never  have  been  developed.  At  the  end  of  the  third 
century,  in  short,  the  Church  of  its  own  nature  was 
rapidly  approaching  disruption  into  new  and  irreconcil- 
able organisations. 


§  5.  Rites  and  Ceremonies. 

Apart  from  the  habit  of  doctrinal  discussion, 
derived  from  Judaism,  the  Christianity  of  the  third 
century  had  distinctly  become  as  much  a  matter  of 
ritual  and  ceremonial  as  any  of  the  older  pagan  cults. 
Churches  built  for  worship,  rare  in  the  second  century, 
had  become  common,  and  images  had  already  begun 
to  appear  in  them,  while  incense  was  coming  into 
general  use,  despite  the  earlier  detestation  of  it  as  a 
feature  of  idolatry.  In  the  wealthier  churches,  gold 
and  silver  medals  were  often  seen.  Pagan  example 
had  proved  irresistible  in  this  as  in  other  matters. 

By  this  time,  baptism  and  the  eucharist  had  alike 
become  virtual  "mysteries,"  to  which  new-comers 
were  initiated  as  in  the  pagan  cults.  Baptism  was 
administered  only  twice  a  year,  and  then  only  to  those 
who  had  undergone  a  long  preparation.  The  first 
proceeding  was  a  solemn  exorcism,  which  was  sup- 
posed to  free  the  initiates  from  the  power  of  the  evil 
spirit  or  spirits.  Then,  after  they  had  repeated  a 
creed  (which  in  the  Western  Churches  had  to  be 
recited  both  in  Greek  and  Latin,  the  Greek  being  in 
the  nature  of  a  magic  formula)  they  were  completely 
immersed,  signed  with  the  cross,  prayed  over,  and 
touched  ceremonially  with  the  hands  of  the  officiating 


STRIFES  OVER  PRIMARY  DOGMA.  125 

bishop  or  presbyter  ;  finally  they  partook  of  milk  and 
honey,  and  returned  home  decorated  with  a  white 
robe  and  a  crown. 

The  eucharist,  commonly  administered  on  Sundays, 
was  regarded  as  absolutely  necessary  to  salvation  and 
resurrection  ;  and  on  that  account  infants  were  made 
to  partake  of  it,  this  before  baptism  had  been  declared 
to  be  essential  in  their  case.  Only  the  baptised  were 
allowed  to  be  present  at  the  celebration  ;  but  portions 
of  the  consecrated  bread  and  wine  were  taken  away 
for  sick  members,  and  believed  to  have  a  curative 
virtue.  The  sign  of  the  cross  was  now  constantly 
used  in  the  same  spirit,  being  held  potent  against 
physical  and  spiritual  evil  alike,  insofar  as  any 
such  distinction  was  drawn.  But  diseases  were 
commonly  regarded  as  the  work  of  evil  spirits,  and 
medical  science  was  generally  disowned,  the  preferred 
treatment  being  exorcism.  A  baptised  person  might 
further  use  the  Lord's  Prayer,  with  its  appeal  against 
the  Evil  One — a  privilege  denied  to  the  catechumen 
or  seeker  for  membership. 

§  6.  Strifes  over  Primary  Dogma. 

The  nucleus  for  a  theistic-Christist  creed,  as  we  have 
seen,  was  given  to  the  Church  in  the  fourth  gospel. 
The  first  Jewish  Jesuists  were  simple  Unitarians ; 
and  the  Jesus  of  Paul,  so  far  as  can  be  safely  inferred 
from  epistles  indefinitely  interpolated,  was  certainly 
no  part  of  a  trinity  in  unity.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  second  century  the  "  orthodox"  Christists  had  no 
more  definite  theology  than  had  the  unlettered 
believers  in  any  pagan  Saviour-God;  and  at  most 


126  SECOND  AND  THIKD  CENTUKIES. 

the  gospels  taught  them  to  regard  the  supernaturally- 
born  Christ  as  having  ascended  to  heaven,  to  sit  in 
visible  form  at  the  right  hand  of  the  Father,  as 
Herakles  or  Dionysos  or  Apollo  might  sit  by  his 
Father  Zeus.  At  the  middle  of  the  century  Justin 
Martyr  speaks  of  the  Logos  not  as  a  personal  form  of 
deity,  but  as  the  inspiration  given  by  God  to  men  in 
different  degrees  at  different  times.  It  is  after  him 
that  the  fourth  gospel  begins  to  do  its  work.  Christian 
apologists,  deriding  the  beliefs  of  the  pagans,  had  to 
meet  the  charge  that  they  too  were  polytheists,  and 
the  old  challenge :  If  the  suffering  Saviour  were  a 
man,  why  worship  him  ?  if  he  were  a  God,  why  weep 
for  his  sufferings  ? 

An  attempt  to  meet  the  difficulty  was  made  in  the 
heresy  of  Praxeas,  a  member  of  the  Church  who, 
coming  from  Asia  to  Rome  late  in  the  century,  seems 
to  have  taught  that  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Spirit  were 
not  distinct  from  the  Father,  but  simply  functions  of 
the  One  God,  the  Father  having  descended  into  the 
Virgin  and  been  born  as  Jesus  Christ.  At  once  he 
was  accused  of  "  making  the  Father  suffer  "  on  the  cross, 
and  his  sect  accordingly  seem  to  have  been  among  the 
first  called  Patripassians.  In  the  same  or  the  next 
century,  Noetus  of  Smyrna  is  found  preaching  the 
same  doctrine  ;  and  in  the  hands  of  Sabellius  of  Libya, 
whose  name  was  given  to  it  by  his  opponents,  the 
teaching  became  one  of  the  most  influential  heresies 
of  the  age.  Sabellius  in  fact  formulated  that  theory 
of  the  Trinity  which  alone  gives  it  formal  plausibility : 
the  three  persona  were  for  him  (as  they  could  etymo- 
logically  be  in  Latin  and  in  the  Greek  term  first 
used,  prosopon)  not  persons,  but  aspects  or  modes 
of  the  deity,  as  power,  wisdom,  and  goodness ;  or  law, 


STRIFES  OVER  PRIMARY  DOGMA. 


127 


mercy,  and  guidance — a  kind  of  solution  which  in 
later  times  has  captivated  many  theologians,  including 
Servetus  and  Coleridge.  But  Sabellius,  like  his  pre- 
decessors, had  to  meet  the  epithet  of  "  Patripassian," 
and  he  appears  to  have  parried  it  with  the  formula 
that  only  a  certain  energy  proceeding  from  the  Divine 
Nature  had  been  united  to  the  man  Jesus.  In  the 
way  of  rationalising  the  imcational  and  giving  con- 
sistency to  contradictories,  the  Church  could  never  do 
better  than  this.  Under  such  a  theorem,  however, 
the  Man-God  as  such  theoretically  disappeared ;  and 
as  that  was  precisely  the  side  of  the  creed  which 
identified  the  cult,  gave  it  popularity,  and  won  it 
revenue,  Sabellianism,  though  accepted  by  many, 
even  by  many  bishops,  could  not  become  the  official 
doctrine.  It  persistently  remained,  nevertheless,  in 
the  background,  the  idea  taking  new  forms  and  names 
in  succeeding  generations,  as  new  men  arose  with 
courage  and  energy  enough  to  reopen  the  insoluble 
strife,  during  a  period  of  four  hundred  years. 

A  solution  by  a  different  approach  was  offered  by 
such  second-century  teachers  as  Theodotus  of  Byzan- 
tium, a  learned  tanner  living  in  Rome ;  another  of  the 
same  name,  a  banker  ;  and  Artemon,  all  founders  of 
sects  by  whom  Jesus  was  regarded  as  merely  a 
superior  man,  supernaturally  born.  As  this  form  of 
the  Unitarian  doctrine  struck  directly  at  the  essential 
element  of  the  Christ's  deity,  in  respect  of  which  the 
cult  vied  with  others  of  the  same  type,  it  was  no  more 
generally  acceptable  than  the  Sabellian;  and  it  is 
more  than  likely  that  the  mere  odium  theologicum  gave 
rise  to  the  story  that  Theodotus  had  first  denied  Christ 
under  persecution,  and  then  framed  a  theology  for  his 
predicament.  Yet  such  doctrines  as  his  must  have 


128  SECOND  AND  THIRD  CENTURIES. 

gone  on  gaining  ground  among  the  more  stirring 
minds ;  for  when  in  the  next  century  Paul  of 
Samosata,  bishop  of  Antioch,  began  to  restate  the 
Unitarian  thesis,  he  found  an  extensive  following. 
The  Logos,  he  taught,  was  not  a  person  distinct  from 
the  Father,  but  merely  his  wisdom,  which  descended 
into  but  was  not  united  with  Jesus.  Given  forth 
about  the  year  260,  Paul's  teaching  was  condemned 
by  a  council  at  Antioch  in  264,  he  giving  a  promise 
of  "  reformation  "  which  he  did  not  keep.  Another 
council,  which  met  in  269  or  270,  deposed  and  excom- 
municated him ;  but  he  refused  to  obey,  and  Queen 
Zenobia  of  Palmyra,  who  then  ruled  Antioch,  pro- 
tected him.  Not  till  272,  when  Antioch  was  retaken 
by  Aurelian,  did  the  majority  succeed  in  ousting  him, 
by  the  emperor's  express  intervention.  And  still  the 
"  heresy  "  persisted,  and  the  theological  hatreds  grew. 
It  belonged  to  the  nature  of  the  religion,  a  pyramid 
poised  on  its  apex,  to  be  in  unstable  equilibrium 
wherever  any  breath  of  reason  could  blow. 

The  development  of  the  councils  in  the  third 
century  is  a  proof  at  once  of  the  growth  of  organisa- 
tion in  the  Church  and  of  the  need  for  it.  It  is  not 
to  be  supposed  that  all  orthodox  Churchmen  looked 
practically  to  the  main  chance ;  it  is  clear,  on  the 
contrary,  that  many  were  moved  by  the  conservative 
zeal  of  the  Bibliolater  of  all  ages,  as  the  heretics  were 
presumably  moved  by  a  spirit  of  reason  ;  but  the 
bishops  must  at  all  times  have  included  many  who 
looked  at  questions  of  creed  from  the  standpoint  of 
finance,  like  so  many  members  of  modern  political 
parties ;  and  they  would  be  apt  to  turn  the  scale  in 
every  serious  dispute.  Even  they,  however,  with 
whatever  aid  from  polemical  propaganda,  could  not 


STRIFES  OVER  PRIMARY  DOGMAS.  129 

long  have  availed  to  preserve  anything  like  a 
preponderating  main  body  if  the  Church  were  left  to 
itself.  The  polemical  writers,  broadly  speaking,  con- 
verted nobody,  but  merely  inflamed  those  already 
convinced;  and  party  strife  was  becoming  more  and 
more  comprehensive,  more  furious,  more  menacing, 
when  the  Church  was  saved  from  itself  by  the  State. 


CHAPTER  II. 

RELATIONS   OF   CHURCH   AND    STATE. 

§  1.  Persecutions. 

IT  was  involved  in  the  aggressive  attitude  of  the 
Christist  movement  that  it  should  be  persecuted  by 
countervailing  fanaticism.  The  original  bias  of  all 
ancient  religion,  indeed,  in  virtue  of  the  simple  self- 
interest  of  priesthoods,  had  been  to  resent  and  suppress 
any  new  worship ;  and  though  nowhere  else  is  the 
course  so  ferociously  enjoined  as  in  the  Hebrew  sacred 
books,  there  are  many  traces  of  it  in  the  pagan  world. 
Thus  the  Dionysiak  cult  had  been  violently  resisted 
on  its  introduction  into  Greece ;  and  the  early  Roman 
law  against  foreign  worships  was  turned  against  it, 
under  circumstances  plainly  exaggerated  by  Livy, 
about  187  B.C.  Later,  a  religious  panic  led  to  the 
official  suppression  in  Rome  of  the  worships  of  Isis 
and  Serapis.  Empire,  however,  everywhere  involved 
some  measure  of  official  toleration  of  diverging  cults  ; 
and  as  in  Babylon  and  Egypt,  so  under  the  Hellenistic 
and  Roman  systems,  the  religions  of  each  of  the  pro- 
vinces were  more  or  less  assimilated  in  all.  When 
even  early  Athens  had  been  constrained  to  permit  the 
non-aggressive  cults  of  the  aliens  within  her  walls, 
far-reaching  empires  could  do  no  less.  Indeed,  the 
very  vogue  of  Christism  depended  on  the  fact  that 
throughout  the  empire  there  was  taking  place  a  new 

130 


PERSECUTIONS.  131 

facility  of  belief  in  strange  Gods.  There  can  be  no 
more  complete  mistake  than  the  common  assertion 
that  it  made  its  appeal  in  virtue  of  the  prevalence  of 
"desolating  scepticism."  On  the  contrary,  rationalism 
had  practically  disappeared ;  and  even  the  Roman 
pagans  most  adverse  to  Christism  were  friendly  to 
other  new  cults. 

Had  the  Christian  cult  been,  like  its  non- Jewish 
contemporaries,  a  mere  effort  to  "worship  God  accord- 
ing to  conscience,"  it  need  not  have  undergone  pagan 
persecution  any  more  than  they,  or  than  Judaism, 
save  when  the  State  imposed  the  duty  of  worshipping 
the  emperor's  statue.  A  God  the  more  was  no 
scandal  to  polytheists.  Christism  had  taken  from 
Judaism,  however,  as  a  first  principle,  the  detestation 
of  "  idols,"  and  its  propaganda  from  the  first  had 
included  a  violent  polemic  against  them.  For  the 
Christians,  the  pagan  Gods  were  not  unrealities  :  they 
were  evil  daemons,  constantly  active.  Insofar,  too, 
as  the  first  Jesuists  in  the  western  part  of  the  empire 
shared  the  Jewish  hatred  for  Borne  that  is  expressed 
in  the  Apocalypse,  they  were  likely  enough  to  provoke 
Roman  violence.  A  constant  prediction  of  the  speedy 
passing  away  of  all  things  was  in  itself  a  kind  of 
sedition ;  and  when  joined  with  contumely  towards  all 
other  religions  it  could  not  but  rouse  resentment. 
Thus,  though  the  story  of  the  great  Neronian  massacre 
is,  as  already  noted,  an  apparent  fiction  as  regards  the 
Christians,  being  unnoticed  in  the  book  of  Acts, 
Jesuists  and  Jews  alike  ran  many  chances  of  local  or 
general  hostility  under  the  empire  from  the  first. 
The  express  doctrines,  put  in  the  mouth  of  the 
founder,  that  he  had  come  to  bring  not  peace  but  a 
sword,  and  to  create  strife  in  families,  were  not  fitted 


132  SECOND  AND  THIED  CENTURIES. 

to  soften  the  prejudices  aroused  by  the  religious  claims 
of  the  new  faith  ;  and  in  the  time  of  Tertullian  they 
were  defined  in  the  west  as  "  enemies  of  the  Gods,  of  the 
emperors,  of  the  laws,  of  morals,  and  of  all  nature." 

According  to  Tertullian,  writing  under  Severus  or 
Caracalla,  only  the  bad  emperors  had  persecuted  the 
Church.  But  its  danger  had  always  lain  less  in 
special  imperial  edicts  than  in  the  ordinary  bearing  of 
the  laws  against  secret  societies  and  nocturnal  worships, 
and  in  the  ordinary  tendency  of  ignorant  and  priest- 
led  fanaticism  to  a  panic  of  cruelty  in  times  of  popular 
distress  or  alarm.  An  earthquake  or  pestilence  was 
always  apt  to  be  visited  on  the  new  "  atheists  "  as 
provokers  of  the  Gods.  The  mere  habit  of  midnight 
worship,  which  is  one  of  the  proofs  that  early  Jesuism 
was  in  some  way  affiliated  to  sun-worship,  was  a 
ground  for  suspicion;  but  as  Mithraism  was  freely 
tolerated  in  spite  of  its  nocturnal  rites,  Christism 
might  have  been,  but  for  its  other  provocations.  And 
even  these  were  for  long  periods  ignored  by  the 
Government.  If  the  often-quoted  letter  of  Pliny  to 
Trajan  (about  the  year  100)  be  genuine,  it  proves  an 
official  disposition  to  protect  the  Christians,  when  politi- 
cally innocent,  from  fanatical  attacks;  and  Tertullian, 
who  speaks  of  such  a  letter,  credits  Marcus  Aurelius 
with  limiting  the  scope  of  the  laws  which  tended  to 
injure  the  sect,  though  we  know  from  Marcus  himself 
that  Christians  suffered  death.  By  common  consent, 
though  there  was  certainly  much  random  persecution 
in  the  first  three  centuries,  the  formula  of  "ten 
persecutions "  is  fabulous  ;  and  that  ascribed  to 
Domitian  is  hardly  better  established  than  that 
ascribed  to  Nero.  That  the  Christists  suffered  specially 
as  tradition  asserts  in  the  reign  of  Hadrian,  when 


PEESECUTIONS.  133 

the  Jews  were  specially  hated  because  of  their  last 
desperate  revolt,  is  probable ;  but  Hadrian  gave  no 
general  orders,  and  is  credited  like  the  Antonines 
with  shielding  the  new  sectaries.  It  is  finally  very 
doubtful  whether  any  ordained  and  legalised  perse- 
cution of  Christians  ever  took  place  save  (1)  in  Egypt 
under  Severus,  who  at  first  and  afterwards  was 
friendly ;  (2)  on  a  small  scale  under  Maximinus ;  (3)  in 
the  east  under  Decius  and  (4)  under  Valerian ;  and 
(5)  throughout  the  empire  under  Diocletian  and  his 
colleagues  (from  303  to  311).  These  episodes  occurred 
within  a  period  of  little  over  a  hundred  years. 

In  all  periods  alike,  from  the  end  of  the  first  century 
down  to  Con stan tine,  there  was  no  doubt  much  ran- 
dom cruelty.  The  letter  from  the  Churches  of  Vienne 
and  Lyons,  cited  by  Eusebius,  and  assigned  to  the 
year  161,  is  a  doubtful  document ;  but  the  savageries 
there  described  were  only  too  possible.  Public  cruelty 
seems  to  have  worsened  in  the  very  period  in  which 
the  inhabitants  of  cities  had  become  most  unused  to 
war,  and  the  finer  minds  had  grown  most  humane  : 
like  the  other  animal  instincts,  it  had  grown  neurotic 
in  conditions  of  vicious  idleness,  and  many  men  had 
become  virtuosi  in  cruelty  as  in  lust.  The  Christian 
gospel  itself  now  held  up  "  the  tormentors  "  as  typical 
of  the  processes  of  divine  punishment ;  and  torture 
was  for  many  an  age  to  be  a  part  of  Christian  as  of 
pagan  legal  procedure. 

Insofar  as  persecution  was  legalised,  it  is  to  be 
understood  not  as  a  putting  down  of  a  new  religious 
belief,  but  as  an  attack  on  its  political  and  social  side. 
In  the  case,  for  instance,  of  Cyprian,  bishop  of 
Carthage,  who  after  a  flight  and  a  banishment  was 
put  to  death  under  Valerian  and  Gallienus  (258),  the 


134  SECOND  AND  THIKD  CENTUBIES. 

bishop's  far-reaching  activities  are  the  presumptive 
reason  for  his  fate.  It  is  to  be  remembered,  as  Gibbon 
notes,  that  in  ten  years  of  Cyprian's  tenure  of  office 
four  emperors  themselves  died  by  the  sword,  with  their 
families  and  their  adherents.  At  times,  no  doubt, 
the  attack  on  Christians  was  unprovoked,  consisting 
as  it  might  in  a  challenge  to  a  Christian  to  swear 
allegiance  by  or  sacrifice  to  the  statue  of  the  emperor, 
when  he  was  willing  to  swear  by  his  own  creed.  The 
public  worship  of  the  emperor  was  the  one  semblance 
of  a  centralised  religious  organisation  which,  like  that 
of  the  Christian  Church,  existed  throughout  the  empire. 
Precedented  by  old  Egyptian  and  eastern  usage,  and 
by  the  practice  of  Alexander  and  his  successors,  it  had 
first  appeared  in  Eome  in  the  offer  of  the  cringing 
senate  to  deify  Julius  Caesar,  and  in  the  systematic 
measures  of  Augustus  to  have  Julius  worshipped  as  a 
God  (divus),  an  honour  promptly  accorded  to  himself 
in  turn.  The  apotheosis  was  signalised  by  giving  the 
names  of  Julius  and  Augustus  to  the  months  Quintilis 
and  Sextilis ;  and  only  the  final  unpopularity  of 
Tiberius  prevented  the  substitution  of  his  name  in 
turn  for  that  of  September,  an  honour  offered  to  and 
refused  by  him  in  his  earlier  life.  Some  of  the  madder 
emperors  later  tried  to  carry  on  the  process  of  putting 
themselves  in  the  calendar,  but  were  duly  disobeyed 
after  death.  Detested  emperors,  such  as  Tiberius  and 
Nero  and  Domitian,  were  even  refused  the  apotheosis ; 
but  in  general  the  title  of  divus  was  freely  accorded, 
so  abject  had  the  general  mind  grown  under  autocracy ; 
and  it  was  usual  in  the  provinces  to  worship  the  living 
emperor  in  a  special  temple  in  association  with  the 
Genius  of  Eome ;  while  the  cults  of  some  emperors 
lasted  long  after  their  death.  The  common  sense  as 


PERSECUTIONS. 


135 


well  as  the  sense  of  humour  of  some  rulers  led  them 
to  make  light  of  the  institution  ;  and  the  jest  of  the 
dying  Vespasian,  "  I  fancy  I  am  turning  God,"  is  one 
of  several  imperial  witticisms  on  the  subject ;  but  it 
lay  in  the  nature  of  autocracy,  in  Rome  as  in  Egypt 
or  in  Incarian  Peru,  to  employ  sagaciously  all 
methods  of  abasing  the  human  spirit,  so  as  to  secure 
the  safety  of  the  throne.  One  of  the  most  obvious 
means  was  to  deify  the  emperor — a  procedure  as 
"  natural  "  in  that  age  as  the  deification  of  Jesus, 
and  depending  on  the  same  psychological  conditions. 
And  though  the  person  of  the  emperor  was  seldom 
quite  safe  from  assassination  by  his  soldiery,  the 
imperial  cult  played  its  part  from  the  first  in  estab- 
lishing the  fatal  ideal  of  empire.  No  sequence  of 
vileness  or  incompetence  in  the  emperors,  no 
impatience  of  the  insecurity  set  up  by  the  power  of 
the  army  to  make  and  unmake  the  autocrat,  no  expe- 
rience of  the  danger  of  a  war  of  claimants,  ever 
seems  to  have  made  Romans  dream  of  a  saner  and 
nobler  system.  Manhood  had  been  brought  too  low. 

Imperialism  being  thus  an  official  religion  in  itself, 
the  cult  of  the  emperor  lay  to  the  hands  of  any 
magistrate  who  should  be  disposed  to  put  a  test  to  a 
member  of  the  sect  which  decried  all  established 
customs  and  blasphemed  all  established  Gods.  It 
was  the  recognised  way  of  imposing  the  oath  of  alle- 
giance apart  from  any  specific  law.  Where  such  a 
procedure  was  possible,  any  malicious  pagan  might 
bring  about  a  stedfast  Christian's  death.  There  is 
Christian  testimony,  however,  that  many  frenzied 
believers  brought  martyrdom  wilfully  on  themselves 
by  outrages  on  pagan  temples  and  sacred  statues  ;  and 
it  is  Tertullian  who  tells  how  Arrius  Antoninus,  pro- 


136  SECOND  AND  THIRD  CENTURIES. 

consul  in  Asia,  drove  from  him  a  multitude  of  frantic 
fanatics  seeking  death,  with  the  amazed  demand 
whether  they  had  not  ropes  and  precipices.  The 
official  temper  evidently  varied,  as  did  that  of  the 
Christians.  In  the  period  before  Diocletian,  save  for 
the  intrigues  of  pagan  priests  and  provincial  dema- 
gogues, and  the  normal  suspicions  of  autocratic  power, 
there  was  nothing  in  the  nature  of  a  general  and 
official  animosity,  though  the  Christian  attitude  was 
always  unconciliatory  enough.  But  by  the  beginning 
of  the  fourth  century  the  developments  on  both  sides 
had  created  a  situation  of  strain  and  danger.  The 
great  effort  of  Diocletian  to  give  new  life  to  the  vast 
organism  of  the  empire,  first  by  minute  supervision, 
and  then  by  subdivision  under  two  emperors  and  two 
Caesars,  wrought  a  certain  seriousness  of  political 
interest  throughout  the  bureaucracy  ;  and  the  Chris- 
tian body,  long  regarded  with  alternate  contempt  and 
dislike,  had  become  so  far  organised  and  so  consider- 
able a  force  that  none  who  broadly  considered  the 
prospects  of  the  State  could  avoid  reckoning  with  it. 
At  the  same  time  paganism  had  taken  on  new  guises : 
the  Neo-Platonists,  so-called,  restated  the  ancient 
mythology  and  theology  in  forms  which  compared 
very  well  with  the  abstract  teaching  of  the  Church ; 
and  among  the  educated  class  there  was  some  measure 
of  religious  zeal  against  Christians  as  blasphemers  of 
other  men's  Gods.  It  may  or  may  not  have  needed 
the  persuasion  of  his  anti-Christian  colleague,  the 
Csesar  Galerius,  to  convince  such  a  ruler  as  Diocletian 
that  the  Christian  Church,  a  growing  State  within 
the  State,  still  standing  by  an  official  doctrine  of  a 
speedy  world' s-end,  and  rejecting  the  cult  of  the 
emperor,  was  an  incongruous  and  dangerous  element 


PERSECUTIONS.  137 

in  the  imperial  scheme.  It  was  in  fact  a  clear  source 
of  political  weakness,  though  not  so  deadly  a  one  as 
the  autocracy  itself.  To  seek  to  suppress  it,  accord- 
ingly, was  almost  a  natural  outcome  of  Diocletian's 
ideal  of  government.  He  had  sought  to  give  a  new 
air  of  sanctity  to  the  worship  of  the  emperor  by 
calling  himself  Jovius  and  his  colleague  Maximian 
Herculius ;  and  to  make  the  effort  succeed,  it  might 
well  seem  necessary  to  crush  the  one  cult  that  directly 
stood  in  the  way,  alike  as  a  creed  and  as  an  organisa- 
tion. The  refusal  of  some  Christian  soldiers,  too,  to 
submit  to  certain  commands  which  they  considered 
unlawful,  gave  Galerius  a  special  pretext  for  strong 
measures. 

It  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that  the  emperors  and  the 
bureaucracy  had  some  excuse  for  a  policy  of  suppres- 
sion in  the  bitter  strifes  of  the  Christian  sects  and 
sections.  Eusebius  confesses  that  these  were  on  the 
verge  of  actual  warfare,  bishop  against  bishop  and 
party  against  party,  each  seeking  for  power ;  and  for 
all  it  was  a  matter  of  course  to  accuse  opponents  of 
the  worst  malpractices.  Some  of  the  darkest  charges 
brought  by  the  pagans  against  Christians  in  general 
were  but  distributions  of  those  brought  by  the 
orthodox  against  heretics,  and  by  Montanists  and 
others  against  the  orthodox.  A  credulous  pagan 
might  well  believe  that  all  alike  carried  on  vile 
midnight  orgies,  and  deserved  to  be  refused  the  right 
of  meeting.  It  is  not  probable,  however,  that  the 
two  emperors  and  the  persecuting  Caesar  proceeded  on 
any  concern  for  private  morals  ;  and  though  Galerius 
was  a  zealous  pagan  with  a  fanatical  mother,  the 
motive  of  the  persecution  was  essentially  political. 
What  happened  was  that  the  passions  of  the  zealots 


138  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

among  the  pagans  had  now  something  like  free  scope ; 
and,  unless  the  record  in  Eusebius  is  sheer  fable,  the 
work  was  often  done  with  horrible  cruelty.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  is  Christian  testimony  to  the 
humanity  of  many  of  the  better  pagans,  who 
sheltered  their  Christian  friends  and  relatives  ;  and 
the  Caesar  Constantius  Chlorus,  a  tolerant  pagan, 
who  ruled  in  Gaul  and  Britain  and  Spain,  gave  only 
a  formal  effect  to  the  edict  of  the  emperors,  destroying 
churches  and  sacred  books,  but  sparing  their  owners. 
The  fact,  finally,  that  in  ten  years  of  persecution  the 
number  of  victims  throughout  the  eastern  and  central 
empire  appears  to  have  been  within  two  thousand, 
goes  to  suggest  that  the  mass  of  the  Christians  either 
bowed  to  the  storm  or  eluded  it.  Bitter  discussions, 
reviving  some  of  the  previous  century,  rose  afterwards 
as  to  the  proper  treatment  of  the  traditores,  those  who 
surrendered  and  forswore  themselves ;  and  the  more 
zealous  sects  and  churches  either  imposed  long 
penances  or  refused  to  receive  back  the  lapsed.  As 
the  latter  course  would  only  weaken  themselves,  the 
majority  of  the  churches  combined  policy  with  penalty. 
The  time  was  now  at  hand  when  the  Church,  from 
being  an  object  of  aversion  to  the  autocracy,  was  to 
become  its  instrument.  Just  before  his  death  in  311, 
Galerius,  who  was  little  of  a  statesman,  began  to  see 
what  Diocletian  would  doubtless  have  admitted  had 
he  lived  much  longer,  and  what  Constantius  Chlorus 
had  probably  suggested  to  his  colleagues,  that  the 
true  policy  for  the  government  was  to  adopt  instead 
of  crushing  the  Christian  organisation.  Only  the 
original  anticivism  of  the  cult,  probably,  had  pre- 
vented a  much  earlier  adoption  of  this  view  by  the 
more  politic  emperors.  It  was  the  insistence  on  the 


PERSECUTIONS. 


139 


imminent  end  of  the  world,  the  preaching  of  celibacy, 
the  disparagement  of  earthly  dignitaries,  the  vehement 
assault  on  the  standing  cults  of  the  State,  no  less 
than  the  refusal  to  sacrifice  to  the  emperor's  statue, 
that  had  so  long  made  Christism  seem  the  natural 
enemy  of  all  civil  government.  The  more  the 
Church  grew  in  numbers  and  wealth,  however,  the 
more  its  bishops  and  priests  tended  to  conform  to  the 
ordinary  theory  of  public  life ;  and  as  theirs  was  now 
the  only  organisation  of  any  kind  that  reached 
throughout  the  State,  save  the  State  itself  and  the 
cult  of  the  emperors,  the  latter  must  evidently 
either  destroy  it  or  adopt  it.  The  great  persecution, 
aiming  at  the  former  end,  served  only  to  show  the 
futility  of  official  persecution  for  such  a  purpose,  since 
pagans  themselves  helped  to  screen  staunch  Chris- 
tians, and  the  weaker  had  but  to  bow  before  the 
storm.  Already  Constantine,  acting  with  a  free  hand 
on  his  father's  principles,  had  given  complete  toler- 
ance to  the  Christians  under  his  sway ;  and  Maxentius, 
struggling  with  him  for  the  mastery  of  the  West,  had 
done  as  much.  Even  in  the  East,  Maximin  had 
alternately  persecuted  and  tolerated  the  Christians 
as  he  had  need  to  press  or  pacify  Galerius.  The 
language  used  by  Galerius,  finally,  in  withdrawing  the 
edict  of  persecution,  suggests  that  besides  recognising 
its  failure  he  had  learned  from  his  opponents  to 
conceive  the  possibility  of  attaching  to  the  autocracy 
a  sect  so  much  more  widely  organised  and  so  much 
more  zealous  than  any  of  the  other  subsisting 
popular  religions,  albeit  still  numbering  only  a  frac- 
tion of  the  whole  population. 

To  many  of  the  Christians,  on  the  other  hand,  long 
persecution    had    doubtless    taught    the  wisdom    of 


140  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

recanting  the  extremes  of  doctrine  which  had  made 
even  sceptical  statesmen  regard  them  as  a  danger  to 
any  State.  It  is  clear  that  bishops  like  Eusebius  of 
Csesarea  would  readily  promise  to  the  government  a 
loyal  attention  to  its  interests  in  the  event  of  its 
tolerating  and  befriending  the  Church ;  and  the  sacred 
books  offered  texts  for  any  line  of  public  action.  The 
empire,  always  menaced  by  barbarism  on  its  frontiers, 
needed  every  force  of  union  that  could  be  used  within ; 
and  here,  finally  adaptable  to  such  use,  was  the  one 
organisation  that  acted  or  was  fitted  to  act  through- 
out the  whole.  To  the  leading  churchmen,  finally, 
association  with  the  State  was  the  more  welcome 
because  on  the  one  hand  general  persecution  would 
cease,  and  on  the  other  all  the  party  leaders  could 
hope  to  be  able  by  the  State's  means  to  put  down 
their  opponents.  A  generation  before,  in  the  year 
272,  the  Emperor  Aurelian,  on  the  express  appeal  of 
the  party  of  bishops  who  had  deposed  Paul  of 
Samosata,  had  intervened  in  that  quarrel  to  give 
effect  to  the  will  of  the  majority,  which  otherwise 
could  not  have  been  put  in  force  ;  and  such  occasions 
were  sure  to  arise  frequently.  It  needed  only  another 
innovating  emperor  to  bring  about  the  coalition  thus 
prepared. 

§  2.  Establishment  and  Creed-Making. 

On  the  abdication  of  the  co-emperors  Diocletian 
and  Maximian,  the  Caesars,  Galerius  and  Constantius 
Chlorus,  became  the  Augusti,  the  former,  as  senior, 
taking  the  East,  and  the  latter  the  West.  At  once 
the  plans  of  Diocletian  began  to  miscarry ;  and 
Galerius,  instead  of  raising  to  the  Csesarship,  as  the 


ESTABLISHMENT  AND  CBEED-MAKING.  141 

other  had  wished,  Maxentius  the  son  of  Maximian  and 
Constantino  the  already  distinguished  son  of  Con- 
stantius,  gave  the  junior  titles  to  his  nephews  Severus 
and  Maximin.  The  speedy  death  of  Constantius,  how- 
ever, secured  the  election  of  Constantine  to  the  purple 
by  his  father's  troops  in  Britain ;  and  there  ensued 
the  manifold  strifes  which  ended  in  Constantino's 
triumph.  Maxentius,  and  his  father,  who  returned  to 
power,  put  down  Severus ;  and  Maximian  gave  his 
daughter  as  wife  to  Constantine,  thus  creating  a  state 
of  things  in  which  three  emperors  were  leagued  against 
a  fourth  and  one  Caesar.  Soon  Maximian  and 
Maxentius  quarrelled,  the  father  taking  refuge  first 
with  Constantine  and  later  with  Galerius  ;  who,  how- 
ever, proceeded  to  create  yet  another  emperor,  Licinius. 
Immediately  the  Caesar  Maximin  revolted,  and  forced 
Galerius  to  make  him  Augustus  also.  The  old 
Maximian  in  the  meantime  went  to  league  himself 
afresh  with  Constantine,  who,  finding  him  treacherous, 
had  him  strangled.  Soon  after,  Galerius  dying  (in 
311),  Maximin  and  Licinius  joined  forces;  while 
Maxentius,  who  held  Italy  and  Africa,  professing  to 
avenge  his  father,  declared  war  on  Constantine,  who 
held  Gaul.  The  result  was  the  defeat  and  death  of 
the  former,  leaving  Constantine  master  of  the  whole 
West  (312).  In  314  he  fell  out  with  Licinius,  who 
had  in  the  meantime  destroyed  Maximin,  and  won 
from  him  Illyrium,  Macedonia,  and  Greece.  For 
twelve  years  thereafter  Constantine  divided  the  empire 
with  Licinius ;  then,  quarrelling  afresh  with  his 
rival,  he  captured  and  strangled  him,  and  was  sole 
autocrat  (324). 

Out  of  this  desperate  drama  emerged  Christianity 
as  the  specially  favoured  cult  of  the  Koman  empire. 


142  FOURTH  CENTUEY. 

Constantine,  we  saw,  had  protected  the  Christians 
from  the  first,  as  his  father  had  done  before  him  ;  and 
Licinius  had  acquiesced  in  the  same  policy,  though  in 
his  final  war  with  Constantine  he  persecuted  the 
Christians  in  order  to  attach  pagans  to  his  cause. 
There  has  been  much  discussion,  nevertheless,  as  to 
whether  Constantine  turned  Christian  on  political  or 
on  religious  grounds.  The  fact  seems  to  be  that,  in 
the  ordinary  spirit  of  ancient  religion,  he  trusted  to 
have  the  support  of  the  God  of  the  Christians  in  his 
great  struggle  with  Maxentius,  who  appealed  to  the 
Gods  of  paganism  with  old  and  evil  rites ;  and  that 
after  his  first  great  success  he  became  more  and  more 
confirmed  in  his  choice.  The  story,  however,  of  his 
having  the  labarum  presented  to  him  in  a  dream  or  a 
vision  is  an  obvious  fiction,  possible  only  to  the 
ignorance  of  the  first  Christian  historians,  who  read 
the  Greek  letters  Xp  (Chr) — though  the  tradition  ran 
that  the  accompanying  words,  "In  this  sign  conquer," 
were  in  Latin — in  a  solar  symbol  that  had  appeared 
on  Egyptian  and  other  coins  many  centuries  before, 
and  had  no  reference  whatever  to  the  name  of  Christ, 
though  Constantine  used  it  for  that  on  his  standards. 
A  similar  tale  is  told  of  his  son  Constantius,  on  whose 
coins,  however,  the  symbol  is  associated  with  the  pagan 
Goddess  of  Victory.  For  the  rest,  Constantine  was 
a  Christian  like  another.  His  father  had  been  a 
monotheist,  who  protected  the  Christians  on  philo- 
sophical principles ;  and  from  the  constant  success  of 
Constantius  in  all  his  undertakings,  as  compared  with 
the  ill  fortune  of  his  own  rivals,  the  son  argued  that 
the  religion  of  "  One  God "  was  propitious  to  his 
house.  His  personal  success  in  war  was  always  his 
main  argument  for  the  Christian  creed,  and  in  such 


ESTABLISHMENT  AND  CREED-MAKING.  143 

an  age  it  was  not  the  least  convincing.  The  fact  that 
he  postponed  his  baptism  till  shortly  before  his  death 
is  not  to  be  taken  as  indicating  any  religious  hesita- 
tions on  his  part.  Multitudes  of  Christians  in  that 
age  did  the  same  thing,  on  the  ground  that  baptism 
took  away  all  sin,  and  that  it  was  bad  economy  to 
receive  it  early.  In  his  case  such  a  reason  was 
specially  weighty,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  he  had  any  other.  Since,  however,  the  pagans 
still  greatly  outnumbered  the  Christians,  he  could  not 
afford  to  declare  definitely  against  all  other  cults ; 
and,  beginning  by  decreeing  toleration  for  all,  he 
kept  the  pagan  title  of  pontifex  maximus,  and  con- 
tinued through  the  greater  part  of  his  life  to  issue 
coins  or  medals  on  which  he  figured  as  the  devotee  of 
Apollo  or  Mars  or  Herakles  or  Mithra  or  Zeus. 

While,  however,  he  thus  propitiated  other  Gods  and 
worshippers,  he  gave  the  Christians  from  the  first  a 
unique  financial  support.  Formerly,  the  clergy  in 
general  had  been  wont  to  supplement  their  monthly 
allowances  by  trading,  farming,  banking,  by  handi- 
craft, and  by  practising  as  physicians ;  but  the 
emperor  now  enacted  that  they  should  have  regular 
annual  allowances,  and  that  the  church's  widows 
and  virgins  should  be  similarly  supported.  Further, 
not  only  did  he  restore  the  possessions  taken  from 
believers  during  the  persecution,  he  enacted  that  all 
their  priests,  like  those  of  Egypt  and  of  the  later  empire 
in  general,  should  be  exempt  from  municipal  burdens  ; 
a  step  as  much  to  their  interest  as  it  was  to  the 
injury  of  the  State  and  of  all  public  spirit.  The 
instant  effect  was  to  draw  to  the  priesthood  multi- 
tudes of  gain-seekers;  the  churches  of  Carthage 
and  Constantinople  soon  had  500  priests  apiece ; 


144  FOUKTH  CENTUBY. 

and  so  strong  were  the  protests  of  the  municipalities 
against  the  financial  disorder  he  had  created  that 
Constantine  was  fain  to  restrict  his  decree.  Certainly 
pagan  flamens  and  public  priests  of  the  provinces,  a 
restricted  class,  had  had  the  same  privilege,  and  this 
he  maintained  for  them  despite  Christian  appeals ; 
nor  does  he  seem  to  have  withdrawn  it  from  the 
priests  and  elders  of  the  Jewish  synagogues,  who  had 
also  enjoyed  it ;  but  his  direct  gifts  to  the  churches 
were  considerable,  and  by  permitting  them  to  receive 
legacies  in  the  manner  of  the  pagan  temples  he 
established  their  financial  basis.  So  great  was  their 
gain  that  laws  had  to  be  passed  limiting  the  number 
of  the  clergy  ;  and  from  this  time  forward  laws  were 
necessary  to  restrain  priests  and  bishops  from  further 
enriching  themselves  by  lending  at  interest.  Clerical 
power  was  still  further  extended.  Bishops,  who  had 
hitherto  acted  as  arbitrators  in  Christian  disputes, 
had  their  decisions  legally  enforced ;  and  the 
important  legal  process  of  freeing  slaves  was  trans- 
ferred from  the  temples  to  the  churches.  Some 
pagan  temples  he  temporarily  suppressed,  on  moral 
grounds  ;  some  he  allowed  to  be  destroyed  as  no  longer 
in  use ;  but  though  he  built  and  richly  endowed 
several  great  Christian  churches  and  passed  some 
laws  against  pagan  practices,  he  never  ventured  on 
the  general  persecution  of  pagans  which  his  Christian 
hangers-on  desired ;  and  the  assertions  of  Eusebius 
as  to  his  having  plundered  the  temples  and  brought 
paganism  into  contempt  are  among  the  many  fictions 
— some  of  them  perhaps  later  forgeries — in  the  works  of 
that  historian.  As  it  was,  Christian  converts  were  suffi- 
ciently multiplied.  Constantine's  severest  measures 
were  taken  against  private  divination,  the  practisers 


ESTABLISHMENT  AND  CREED-MAKING.  145 

of  which  he  ordered  to  be  burnt  alive ;  but  here  he 
acted  on  the  standing  principles  of  pagan  law,  and 
doubtless  under  the  usual  autocratic  fear  of  sooth- 
saying against  himself.  The  measure  of  course  had 
no  effect  on  popular  practice.  The  emperors  them- 
selves usually  consulted  diviners  before  their  own 
accession ;  and  their  veto  on  divination  for  other 
people  was  not  impressive. 

It  is  in  his  relations  to  his  chosen  church,  code,  and 
creed  that  Constantine  figures  at  his  worst.  In  the 
year  after  his  victory  over  Licinius,  when  a  doubly 
convinced  Christian,  he  put  to  death  his  son  Crispus, 
a  nephew,  and  his  wife,  Fausta;  and  he  had  strangled 
Licinius  and  his  son  after  promising  to  preserve  their 
lives  ;  but  not  a  word  of  censure  came  from  the  Chris- 
tian clergy.  At  one  stroke,  their  whole  parade  of 
superior  morality  was  gone ;  and  the  church  thenceforth 
was  to  be  as  zealous  a  sycophant  of  thrones  as  the  priests 
of  the  past  had  ever  been.  Constantine  lived  without 
rebuke  the  ordinary  life  of  autocrats  ;  and  by  the 
admission  of  his  episcopal  panegyrist  he  was  sur- 
rounded by  worthless  self-seekers,  Christians  all. 
Such  as  he  was,  however,  Constantine  was  joyfully 
accepted  as  head  of  the  Church  on  earth.  His  creation 
of  the  new  capital,  Constantinople,  was  regarded  as  the 
beginning  of  a  new  era,  that  of  Christianity  ;  since  the 
upper  classes  of  Kome  were  the  most  zealous  devotees 
of  the  old  Gods,  and  were  said  to  have  received 
Constantine  on  his  last  visit  with  open  disrespect. 
Remaining  pontifex  maxinius,  he  presided  over  the 
(Ecumenical  Council  of  the  Church ;  and  one  of  the 
abuses  he  established  was  to  put  the  entire  imperial 
postal  service,  with  its  relays  of  horses  and  chariots, 
at  the  service  of  the  bishops  travelling  to  attend  them. 


146  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

For  all  his  efforts  he  had  the  reward  of  seeing  them 
quarrel  more  and  more  furiously  over  their  central 
dogmas  and  over  questions  of  discipline.  Under  his 
eyes  there  arose  the  great  schism  of  Arius,  and  the 
schism  of  the  Donatists  in  Africa,  both  destined  to 
deepen  and  worsen  for  many  generations.  The  failure 
of  the  Church  as  a  means  of  moral  union  becomes 
obvious  once  for  all  as  soon  as  the  act  of  establish- 
ment has  removed  the  only  previous  restraining  force 
on  Christian  quarrels,  fear  of  the  pagan  enemy. 
Clerical  revenues  being  mostly  local,  schism  was  still  no 
economic  disadvantage  to  any  sectary  ;  and  the  Chris- 
tian creed  availed  as  little  to  overrule  primary  instincts 
of  strife  as  to  provide  rational  tests  for  opinion  or 
action. 

It  would  seem  as  if  whatever  mental  impulse  were 
left  in  men  must  needs  run  in  the  new  channels 
opened  up  for  ignorant  energy  by  ecclesiasticism  and 
theology  in  that  world  of  deepening  ignorance  and 
waning  civilisation.  Literature  as  such  was  vanishing ; 
art  was  growing  more  impotent  reign  by  reign  ;  and 
the  physical  sciences,  revived  for  a  time  in  their 
refuge  at  Alexandria  by  the  Antonines  and  Flavians, 
were  being  lost  from  the  hands  of  the  living.  To 
attribute  the  universal  decadence  to  Christianity  would 
be  no  less  an  error  than  the  old  falsism  that  it  was  a 
force  of  moral  regeneration  :  it  was  an  effect  rather 
than  a  cause  of  the  general  lapse.  But,  once  estab- 
lished as  part  of  the  imperial  machinery,  it  hastened 
every  process  of  intellectual  decay ;  and  under  such 
circumstances  moral  gain  could  not  be.  A  doctrine 
of  blind  faith  could  not  conceivably  save  a  world 
sinking  through  sheer  lack  of  light. 

To  Constantino,  the  endless  strifes  of  the  clergy 


ESTABLISHMENT  AND  CREED-MAKING.  147 

over  their  creeds  were  as  unintelligible  as  they  were 
insoluble.  Like  the  centurion  of  the  gospel  story, 
wont  to  command  and  to  be  obeyed,  he  looked  for 
discipline  in  divine  things ;  and  as  the  theological 
feud  became  more  and  more  embroiled  he  passed  from 
uneasiness  to  a  state  between  fear  and  rage.  The 
Dii-initas,  he  protested,  would  be  turned  against  all, 
clergy  and  emperor  and  laity  alike,  if  the  clergy 
would  not  live  at  peace  ;  and  he  quaintly  besought 
them  to  leave  points  of  theory  alone,  or  else  to  imitate 
the  pagan  philosophers,  who  could  debate  without 
hatred.  The  ever-quarrelling  Church  was  becoming 
a  laughing-stock  to  the  Pagans,  being  derided  in  the 
very  theatres ;  and  its  new  converts  could  be  those 
only  who  went  wherever  there  was  chance  of  gain. 
So,  in  one  of  his  rages,  he  decreed  murderous  punish- 
ments against  intractable  schismatics,  only  to  find 
that  the  menace  multiplied  the  offence.  Such  as  it 
was,  however,  the  Church  was  an  instrument  of  auto- 
cratic organisation  not  to  be  dispensed  with  ;  and  thus, 
at  the  stage  at  which  its  theological  impulses,  un- 
checked by  sane  moral  feeling,  would  in  the  absence 
of  persecution  by  the  State  have  rent  it  in  mutually 
destroying  factions,  the  official  protection  of  the  State 
in  turn  came  in  to  hold  it  together  as  a  nominal  unity. 
Thus  and  thus  did  the  organism  survive — by  anything 
rather  than  moral  vitality  or  intellectual  virtue. 

Leaving  to  the  councils  the  settlement  or  unsettle- 
ment  of  dogmas,  the  emperor  took  upon  himself,  to 
the  great  satisfaction  of  the  clergy,  the  whole  external 
administration  of  the  Church,  assimilating  it  to  his 
body  politic.  The  four  leading  bishoprics — Rome, 
Antioch,  Alexandria,  and  Constantinople — were  put 
on  a  level  with  the  four  praetorian  prefectures  ;  under 


148  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

them  were  ecclesiastical  exarchs,  corresponding  to  the 
thirteen  civil  exarchs  of  given  territories  or  dioceses  ; 
and  next  came  metropolitans  or  archbishops  who 
superintended  the  single  provinces,  116  in  all. 
In  the  next  century,  the  Bishop  of  Jerusalem,  formerly 
subject  to  Antioch,  became  independent ;  and  those 
five  sees  became  known  as  the  five  Patriarchates. 
Numbers  of  churches  still  remained  for  various 
reasons  technically  independent ;  but  the  natural 
effect  of  the  whole  system  was  to  throw  all  authority 
upwards,  the  bishops  overriding  the  presbyters,  and 
all  seeking  to  limit  the  power  of  the  congregations  to 
interfere.  As  the  latter  would  now  include  an 
increasing  number  of  indifferentists,  the  development 
was  the  more  easy.  On  the  side  of  external  ceremony, 
always  the  gist  of  the  matter  for  the  majority,  as  well  as 
in  myth  and  theory,  Christianity  had  now  assimilated 
nearly  every  pagan  attraction  :  baptism,  as  aforesaid, 
was  become  a  close  copy  of  an  initiation  into  pagan 
mysteries,  being  celebrated  twice  a  year  by  night  with 
a  blaze  of  lights  ;  and  when  Constantine  enacted  that 
the  Day  of  the  Sun  should  be  treated  as  specially  holy, 
he  was  merely  bracketing  together  pagan  and  Chris- 
tian theology,  the  two  sanctions  being  equally  involved. 
It  was  of  course  not  a  sacred  day  in  the  modern 
Puritan  sense,  being  simply  put  on  a  level  with  the 
other  great  festival  days  of  the  State,  on  which  no 
work  was  done,  but  play  was  free. 

It  was  in  the  year  after  his  attainment  of  the  sole 
power  that  Constantine  summoned  a  General  Council 
at  his  palace  of  Nicaea  in  Bithynia  (825),  to  settle  the 
theological  status  of  the  founder  of  the  Church.  The 
question  had  been  ostensibly  decided  as  against  Paul 
of  Samosata  and  the  Sabellians  (who  made  the  Son  a 


ESTABLISHMENT  AND  CREED-MAKING.  14'J 

mere  manifestation  or  aspect  of  the  Father)  by  the 
dictum  that  they  were  different  persons.  That  was 
for  the  time  orthodox  dogma.  When,  however,  Arius, 
a  presbyter  of  Alexandria,  declared  as  against  his 
bishop  that  "  the  Son  is  totally  and  essentially  distinct 
from  the  Father,"  the  trouble  began  afresh.  Arius 
found  many  adherents,  who  accused  the  bishop  of 
Sabellianising  when  he  affirmed  that  the  Son  and  the 
Father  were  of  the  same  essence ;  and  the  Church 
saw  itself  once  more  driven  to  define  its  God.  Bishop 
Alexander  had  Arius  cast  out  of  the  Church  by  two 
Alexandrian  Councils,  with  the  effect  of  driving  him 
to  a  more  zealous  propaganda,  which  succeeded  as 
promptly  and  as  widely  as  any  previous  heresy. 
Thereupon  the  Council  of  Nicaea,  by  a  majority  vote, 
enacted  that  the  Son  was  of  the  same  essence 
(homoonsios)  with  the  Father,  yet  a  different  person, 
and  one  with  yet  born  of  the  Father  ;  a  creed  to  that 
effect  was  framed  ;  Arius  was  sent  into  exile  ;  and  the 
leading  bishops  on  his  side  were  deposed.  It  was  a 
mere  snatch  vote  by  a  packed  jury,  since  only  some 
300  bishops  were  present,  whereas  the  Church  con- 
tained at  least  1,800;  and  five  years  afterwards 
Constantine,  who  on  his  own  part  had  ordered  that 
the  writings  of  Arius  should  be  burned,  yet  expressed 
himself  as  an  ultra-Arian,  became  persuaded  that  the 
heresiarch  had  been  ill-used,  and  recalled  him  from 
exile.  Thereupon  the  restored  Arian  bishops  began 
to  persecute  their  persecutors ;  and  Athanasius,  the 
new  bishop  of  Alexandria,  having  refused  to  reinstate 
Arius,  he  in  turn  was  deprived  of  his  office  by  the 
Council  of  Tyre  (835)  and  banished  to  Gaul,  other 
depositions  following ;  while  a  large  council  held  at 
Jerusalem  formally  restored  the  Arians ;  and  the 


150  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

emperor  commanded  the  bishop  of  Constantinople  to 
receive  the  heresiarch.  Before  this  could  be  done, 
however,  Arms  died  at  Constantinople  (336) ,  apparently 
by  poison,  and  Constantine  died  the  year  after,  bap- 
tised by  an  Arian  bishop,  leaving  the  two  parties  at 
grips  for  their  long  wrestle  of  hate.  Within  a  few 
years,  the  emperor's  son  Constans  was  threatening  to 
make  war  on  his  brother  Constantine  if  he  did  not 
reinstate  Athanasius. 

No  vainer  dispute  had  ever  convulsed  any  society. 
As  an  ecclesiastical  historian  has  remarked,  both 
parties  believed  in  salvation  through  the  blood  of 
Jesus :  on  this  primitive  dogma,  inherited  from  pre- 
historic barbarism,  there  was  no  dispute  :  and  the 
battle  was  over  the  hopeful  point  of  "  assigning  him 
that  rank  in  the  universe  which  properly  belonged  to 
him."  Orthodoxy  would  have  it  that  the  Son  was 
Son  from  all  eternity — exactly,  once  more,  as  devout 
Brahmans  and  Moslems  have  maintained  that  the 
Vedas  and  the  Koran  were  "  uncreated,"  and  existed 
from  all  eternity.  Man's  instinct  of  reverence  seems 
to  lead  mechanically  to  such  conceptions  in  the  absence 
of  critical  thought.  But  the  thought,  on  the  other  side, 
which  made  Jesus  a  God  born  in  time,  and  homoiomios 
(of  similar  essence)  with  the  Father,  was  only  rela- 
tively saner.  Thus  the  Arians,  rational  in  one  aspect, 
took  their  stand  on  a  fundamental  irrationality  ; 
while  the  Trinitarians,  as  represented  by  Athanasius, 
found  a  sufficient  substitute  for  argument  in  bound- 
less vituperation.  The  fact  that  the  Arians  opposed 
monasticism  and  the  ideal  of  perpetual  virginity 
served  to  heighten  orthodox  resentment.  The 
hatred  was  beyond  all  measure,  and  can  be  accounted 
for  only  by  recognising  that  a  creed  which  appeals 


ESTABLISHMENT  AND  CREED-MAKING.  161 

to  emotion  and  degrades  reason  is  potentially  the 
worst  stimulant  of  evil  passions.  On  the  intel- 
lectual side,  if  it  can  be  said  to  have  had  one,  the 
theory  of  the  Trinity  was  a  simple  appropria- 
tion by  Christianity  of  the  conception  of  divine 
Triads  which  prevailed  in  the  old  Egyptian  system  ; 
and  of  which  the  Trinity  of  Osiris,  Isis,  and  Horus 
was  a  well-known  instance.  Athanasius  was  but 
adding  Christian  passion  to  yet  another  pagan 
theorem,  assimilated  on  Gnostic  lines,  with  a  new7 
stress  laid  on  the  verbal  affirmation  of  monotheism. 
The  one  quasi-rational  argument  applicable  to  the 
case  would  be  the  non-moral  one  that  the  cult  was 
visibly  between  the  Scylla  of  polytheism  and  the 
Charybdis  of  a  monotheism  which  reduced  Jesus  to 
mere  manhood  ;  and  that  if  a  nakedly  self-contradic- 
tory formula  could  preserve  it  from  collapse  on  either 
side  such  a  formula  should  be  enacted.  Such  an 
argument  was  of  course  not  put  forward,  but  probably 
it  appealed  to  some  of  the  shrewder  and  less  honest 
bishops,  who  in  the  ensuing  strifes  would  neverthe- 
less adapt  themselves  to  the  political  urgency  of  the 
moment.  The  State  had  happily  created  a  species  of 
official  integument,  within  which  the  warring  members 
remained  nominally  one  church.  Within  that  super- 
ficies the  chaos  became  indescribable.  The  Arians 
in  their  turn  broke  up  into  half-a-dozen  mutually 
anathematising  sects,  each  brandishing  a  creed  ;  and 
every  new  phase  of  heresy  evoked  orthodox  rejoinders 
which  in  turn  were  found  to  be  heresies  in  the  other 
direction.  On  the  first  series  of  strifes  followed  a 
second,  as  to  the  manner  of  the  combination  of  the 
divine  and  human  natures  in  Jesus  ;  with  yet  a  third, 
over  the  personality  or  modality  of  the  Holy  Ghost ; 


152  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

till  theology  had  become  a  kind  of  systematic  insanity. 
While  Egypt  and  the  East  were  thus  embroiled, 
northern  Africa,  "orthodox"  on  the  Trinity,  was 
being  given  up  to  the  schism  of  the  Donatists,  one  of 
the  many  outbreaks  of  the  Puritan  or  ascetic  instinct 
there,  where  of  old  had  flourished  some  of  the  most 
sensual  worships.  The  quarrel  began  over  the 
election  of  a  bishop  of  Carthage,  and  the  puritan  side 
received  its  title  from  one  or  both  of  two  bishops 
named  Donatus.  Council  after  council  failed  to  com- 
pose the  feud ;  and  the  emperor  fared  no  better  when 
he  took  from  the  schismatics  some  of  their  temples, 
banished  some  of  their  bishops,  and  put  numbers  to 
death.  In  the  year  330  one  of  their  councils  num- 
bered 270  bishops ;  and  still  the  schism  went  on 
growing.  Any  sect,  it  was  clear,  might  grow  as  the 
Jesuist  sect  itself  had  done.  Alongside  of  the  others 
now  rose  yet  a  new  movement,  that  of  Manichaeaus  or 
Manes,  a  Persian,  who  combined  in  Gnostic  fashion 
the  Christian  scheme  and  that  of  Mazdean  dualism, 
identifying  Jesus  with  Mithra  ;  and  this  cult  in  turn, 
being  carefully  organised,  spread  fast  and  far, 
flourishing  all  the  more  after  Manes  had  been  put  to 
death  by  the  Persian  king  as  a  heretic  to  Mazdeism 
(?275).  It  had  a  president,  representing  Christ;  twelve 
masters,  representing  the  twelve  apostles ;  and 
seventy-two  bishops,  representing  the  seventy-two 
apostles  of  the  third  gospel  or  the  seventy-two 
travelling  collectors  of  the  Jewish  patriarchs.  Like 
most  of  the  earlier  Gnostics  the  Manichaeans  were 
"  Docetists,"  holding  that  Jesus  had  only  a  seeming 
body  and  could  not  really  suffer  ;  and  they  not  only 
denounced  the  Old  Testament,  calling  Jehovah  the 
Evil  Spirit,  but  rejected  the  four  gospels  in  favour  of 


ESTABLISHMENT  AND  CREED-MAKING.  158 

a  new  one,  called  Erteng,  which  Manes  affirmed  had 
been  dictated  to  him  by  God.  Improving  on 
Montanus,  he  claimed  to  be  the  promised  Paraclete ; 
thus  beginning  a  new  cultus  on  all  fours  with  the 
Christist.  On  the  side  of  ethics  the  new  cult  extolled 
and  professed  all  the  ascetic  virtues,  and  held  by  a 
theory  of  a  twofold  purgatory,  one  of  sacred  water  in 
the  moon,  and  one  of  sacred  fire  in  the  sun,  which 
burned  away  the  impure  body,  leaving  an  immortal 
spirit.  With  its  independent  gospel,  ManichaeisnK' 
had  all  the  popular  vitality  of  Montanism  with  the 
intellectual  pretensions  of  Gnosticism.  Nothing,  it 
was  clear,  could  hinder  the  creation  of  new  sects  out  of 
or  alongside  the  main  body  ;  and  nothing  but  the  most 
systematic  and  destructive  persecution  could  prevent 
their  separate  continuance  while  zeal  subsisted. 

Under  the  family  of  Constantine  his  creed  and  his 
policy  were  maintained,  with  no  better  fruits  under 
either  the  personal  or  the  political  aspect.  To  his 
three  sons  —  Canstantine  II.,  Constantius,  and 
Constans — with  two  of  his  nephews,  he  left  the 
empire ;  but  immediately  the  nephews  were  massacred 
with  their  fathers;  of  the  three  sons  the  second 
destroyed  the  first  in  war  (340) ;  and  the  third, 
succeeding  to  the  western  provinces  of  the  first,  fell 
in  war  with  a  new  competitor,  Magnentius  (350)  ; 
whereafter  Constantius,  defeating  the  latter  by 
deputy,  became  sole  emperor  (353-361).  To  him 
appears  to  be  chargeable  the  deliberate  assassination 
at  one  stroke  of  the  two  surviving  brothers  of  his 
father  and  all  their  sons  save  two,  Gallus  and  Julian, 
the  sons  of  Julius  Constans  ;  and  at  his  hands  began 
at  least  the  theoretical  persecution  of  paganism  on 
the  eager  pressure  of  the  church  which  forty  years 


154  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

before  had  been  persecuted.  It  thus  remains  matter 
of  history  that  while  many  pagans  had  been  in  favour 
of  tolerance  before  the  establishment  of  Christianity, 
the  Christians,  who  had  naturally  condemned  all 
persecution  while  they  suffered  from  it,  were  ready  to 
become  zealous  persecutors  as  soon  as  they  had  the 
power.  The  treatise  of  Julius  Firmicus  Maternus  on 
pagan  errors  is  an  eager  appeal  to  the  sons  of  Con- 
stantine  to  destroy  all  pagan  worships.  In  point  of 
fact,  pagans  were  not  the  first  to  suffer.  Excommuni- 
cations, banishments,  and  executions  of  schismatics 
had  been  among  the  first  fruits  of  Constan tine's  head- 
ship ;  and  though  for  a  time  many  recoiled  from 
putting  to  death  their  heretical  fellow-Christians, 
within  a  century  that  scruple  too  had  disappeared. 
Thus  again  was  "the  Church"  enabled  to  survive. 

Christian  persecution  of  paganism,  on  the  other 
hand,  did  not  take  effect  as  promptly  as  its  instigators 
would  seem  to  have  wished.  In  341,  Constans  made 
an  absurd  law  that  "  superstition  should  cease,  and 
the  madness  of  sacrifices  be  abolished,"  on  pain  of 
death  to  all  who  persisted.  No  official  action  seems 
to  have  been  taken  under  this  decree ;  and  next  year, 
being  doubtless  forced  to  respect  the  pagan  party,  he 
enacted  that  though  superstition  must  be  suppressed 
the  old  temples  should  be  spared.  In  353,  Constantius 
in  turn  appears  from  the  Theodosian  Code  to  have 
decreed  that  all  temples  throughout  the  empire  should 
be  closed ;  that  all  who  resorted  to  them  or  offered 
sacrifice  should  be  put  to  death,  and  their  property 
confiscated ;  and  that  governors  who  did  not  enforce 
the  law  should  themselves  be  so  punished.  In  the 
same  year  he  ostensibly  struck  at  nocturnal  pagan 
rites  at  Rome,  where  Christian  rites  had  so  long  been 


ESTABLISHMENT  AND  CREED-MAKING.  155 

nocturnal.  Three  years  later,  when  Julian  had 
become  Caesar  under  him,  he  framed  a  law,  signed  by 
both,  which  in  a  few  words  reaffirms  the  death  penalty 
on  all  who  sacrificed,  or  worshipped  idols — this  when 
some  Christians  were  already  worshipping  idols  in 
their  churches.  As  there  is  no  trace  whatever  of  any 
official  action  being  taken  under  these  laws,  and  as 
there  is  abundant  monumental  proof  that  at  least  in 
the  western  empire  and  in  Egypt  the  pagan  worships 
were  carried  on  freely  as  before,  we  are  forced  to 
conclude  that  the  edicts,  if  really  penned,  were  never 
given  out  by  Constantius.  It  remains  on  record  that 
he,  keeping  the  pagan  title  of  pontifex  maximus,  passed 
stringent  laws,  as  Constans  had  done,  against  all  who 
desecrated  pagan  tombs ;  and  further  that  he  went  on 
paying  the  stipends  of  flamens,  augurs,  and  vestals — 
personages  usually  of  high  rank.  It  appears  that  in 
fact  the  autocrat  could  not  or  dared  not  yet  enforce 
his  laws  against  the  pagan  worships.  In  the  East  in 
general,  however,  and  even  in  Italy,  wherever  temples 
were  unfrequented  and  ill  defended  they  were  liable  to 
shameless  plunder  or  destruction  by  Christians,  who 
were  safe  from  punishment. 

On  the  other  hand,  Constantius  multiplied  the 
financial  privileges  of  Christians,  gave  higher  stipends 
to  the  clergy  and  doles  of  corn  to  the  congregations,  and 
maintained  an  enormous  retinue  of  vicious  Christian 
parasites,  the  whole  process  worsening  the  already 
desperate  public  burdens,  and  straining  to  the 
utmost  a  financial  system  already  near  the  point  of 
collapse.  As  head  of  the  Church,  he  presided  at 
Councils ;  and  as  a  semi- Arian  he  encouraged  Arianism 
and  persecuted  Athanasianism,  the  orthodox  not 
daring  openly  to  gainsay  him.  As  little  did  either  party 


156  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

condemn  him  when  he  brutally  murdered  the  young 
Gallus,  the  Christian  brother  of  Julian,  leaving  only 
the  latter  alive  of  all  Constantine's  house.  To  the 
bishops  assembled  in  council  he  announced  that  his 
will  was  as  good  as  a  canon  ;  and  he  forbade  them  to 
condemn  opinions  which  he  held.  One  bishop  he 
caused  to  be  tortured ;  others  to  be  banished ;  one  he 
put  to  death ;  and  he  would  doubtless  have  slain 
Athanasius  had  he  not  been  so  well  concealed  by  the 
monks  of  Egypt.  Under  his  pressure  the  council  of 
Rimini  declared  for  Arianism  ;  and  for  himself  he 
framed  the  new  title  "  His  Eternity,"  calling  himself 
the  lord  of  the  universe.  Only  the  favor  of  the 
empress,  and  the  emperor's  own  fears,  saved  Julian 
from  his  brother's  fate,  as  his  death  seems  to  have 
been  planned.  The  Church  was  worthy  of  its  head. 
"At  each  episcopal  election  or  expulsion,"  says  an 
orthodox  writer,  "  the  most  exalted  sees  of  Christendom 
— Constantinople,  Alexandria,  Antioch — furnished 
scenes  that  would  have  disgraced  a  revolution." 
Julian  has  told  how  whole  troops  of  those  who  were 
called  heretics  were  massacred,  notably  at  Cyzicus  and 
at  Samosata ;  while  in  Paphlagonia,  Bithynia,  Galatia, 
and  many  other  provinces,  towns  and  villages  were 
utterly  destroyed.  In  one  massacre  at  Constantinople, 
the  second  in  connection  with  the  forcible  re-instal- 
ment of  the  semi-Arian  bishop  Macedonius  (342), 
there  perished  more  than  three  thousand  people — 
considerably  more  than  had  suffered  death  in  the 
whole  ten  years  of  the  last  pagan  persecution.  The 
orthodox  populace,  divided  in  furious  factions,  fighting 
like  savages  in  their  very  churches,  were  as  brutal  as 
their  masters ;  and  no  priesthood  was  ever  more 
powerless  for  good  than  the  Christian  clergy  in  face 


REACTION  UNDER  JULIAN.  157 

of  these  horrors.  Gregory  of  Nazianzun,  whose  own 
ferocities  of  utterance  illustrate  the  character  of  the 
period,  declared  truly  that  he  had  never  seen  a  synod 
do  aught  but  worsen  a  quarrel.  Such  was  Christianity 
under  the  first  Christian-bred  emperor.  And  if 
Tiridates  of  Armenia  (conv.  302)  be  taken  as  the  first 
Christian  king,  the  beginnings  of  State  Christianity 
are  not  greatly  improved,  since  there  the  new  faith 
was  spread  by  fire  and  sword,  and  the  old  persecuted 
unremittingly  for  a  hundred  years,  during  which  time 
raged  many  wars  of  religion  between  Armenia  and 
Persia.  The  new  faith  had  "come  not  to  bringpeace." 


S>3,  -§""4;  Reaction  under  Julian. 

By  common  consent,  the  episode  of  the  short  pagan 
"  revival "  under  Julian  is  the  most  interesting  chapter 
in  the  later  history  of  the  Roman  Empire  proper. 
The  one  emperor  alter  Marcus  Aurelius  who  attracts 
us  as  a  human  being  and  as  a  mind,  he  set  himself  a 
task  which,  whether  he  failed  or  succeeded,  must  lift 
his  name  high  in  the  annals  of  a  decadent  civilisa- 
tion :  his  failure,  in  fact,  makes  him  the  most  living 
figure  in  the  long  line  of  autocrats  from  Constantine 
to  Charlemagne.  It  is  by  such  contrast,  indeed,  that 
he  becomes  eminent.  Measured  by  the  standards  of 
progressive  civilisations,  against  the  great  minds  of 
the  pre-imperial  world  and  the  best  statesmen  of  later 
realms,  he  is  neither  a  great  ruler  nor  a  great  intel- 
ligence. To  look  for  !i  ruling  mind  of  the  highest 
order  in  that  environment  of  decay  would  be  to  miss 
the  first  and  last  lesson  of  the  history  of  the  empire. 
Supposing  a  really  great  faculty  to  be  born  in  such  a 


158  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

society,  it  could  not  conceivably  grow  to  efficiency  : 
the  intellectual  and  the  emotional  atmosphere  forbade. 
Before  there  can  be  all-round  minds  there  must  be 
all-round  men  ;  and  the  empire  had  made  an  end  of 
the  species.  Intellectual  originality  had  long  dis- 
appeared from  a  world  in  which  the  topmost  distinc- 
tion stood  for  mere  brute  force,  cultured  men  grovel- 
ling before  it  like  scourged  animals.  The  brooding 
intensity  of  Lucretius  and  the  large  sanity  of  Caesar 
were  become  as  impossible  to  men  of  the  Koman  name 
as  the  life  of  the  forum  of  Coriolanus'  day,  or  the 
Greek  literature  of  the  age  of  Aristophanes.  The 
process  of  putting  a  yoke  on  the  world  had  duly  ended 
in  a  world  of  yoke-bearers,  whose  best  leaders  could 
but  harness  them.  Julian,  a  wistful  child,  saved  from 
the  massacre  of  his  house,  and  growing  up  in  a  library 
whose  lore  there  was  no  man  competent  to  comment 
for  him,  became  finally  a  believer  in  every  religion 
save  the  one  which  sought  to  exterminate  the  rest. 
Steeped  in  theosophies,  he  was  capable  of  exulting  in 
the  disappearance  of  the  Epicureans,  the  sanest  because 
the  least  credulous  of  the  philosophic  sects.  Yet  the 
lore  he  loved,  such  as  it  was,  had  sufficed  to  make  him 
or  keep  him  a  model  of  temperance  and  self-control ; 
chaste  and  abstemious  while  master  of  the  world  ; 
just  and  magnanimous  under  provocations  which,  if 
he  would,  he  could  have  met  by  wholesale  slaughter  ; 
caring  above  all  for  the  inner  life  while  wielding 
capably  the  whole  armed  power  of  the  State.  If  we 
talk  of  moral  success,  it  must  still  be  said  that 
Christianity  never  gave  any  section  of  the  Roman 
Empire  a  ruler  worthy  to  stand  by  Marcus  and  Julian  ; 
and  that  on  all  the  thrones  of  the  world  to-day  there 
is  no  man  who  can  be  compared  with  them  in  moral 


REACTION  UNDER  JULIAN.  159 

nobility.  If,  again,  we  keep  our  eyes  on  the  age  of 
Constantine,  we  cannot  but  be  struck  by  the  fact  that 
Constantius  "  the  pale,"  the  father  of  Constantine,  a 
monotheist  but  not  a  Christian,  and  Julian,  who  turned 
away  from  Christianity  to  polytheism,  are  by  far  the 
best  men  in  the  series  of  rulers  of  that  house.  Chris- 
tianity attracted  the  worse  men,  Constantine  and  his 
sons,  and  repelled  or  failed  to  satisfy  the  better  ;  and 
the  younger  Constantius,  who  was  bred  and  remained 
a  Christian,  is  the  worst  of  all.  The  finer  character- 
values  are  all  associated  with  paganism  :  on  the  Chris- 
tian side  there  is  a  signal  defect  of  good  men. 

Julian's  short  life  was  crowded  no  less  with  expe- 
rience than  with  study.     Educated  as  a  Christian,  he 
learned,  while  his  life  lay  at  the  mercy  of  Constantius, 
to  keep  his  own  counsel  as  to  the  creed  of  which  he 
had  seen  such  bloody  fruits.     It  seems  to  have  been 
before  the  murder  of  his  brother  (354)  that  he  was 
secretly  converted  to  paganism,  during  his  studies  at 
Pergamos.     When  he  was  appointed  Caesar  (355)  it 
was  under  strict  tutelage  ;  and  during  his  five  years 
of  able  generalship  as  Caesar  in  Gaul  and  Germany, 
even  after  the  legions  had  proclaimed  him  Augustus 
(360),  he   concealed   his   creed.     It   was   only   when 
marching  against  Constantius  that  he  avowed  it,  and 
offered  sacrifices  to  the  ancient  Gods  ;  but  when  the 
death  of  the  terror-stricken  emperor  left  him  in  sole 
power  (361)  he  at  once  proceeded  zealously  to  reinstate 
the  old  rites.     Himself  an  ardent  idealist  and  practical 
ascetic,  he  yearned  to  make  paganism  a  ministry  of 
purity    and    charity,    which    should    copy   from   the 
Christians  their  primary  Judaic  practice  of   feeding 
the  poor,  and  set  its  face  against  popular  ribaldry  as 
steadfastly  as  they  once  had  done,  but  with  a  Stoic 


160  FOUKTH  CENTURY. 

temperance  rather  than  a  gloomy  fanaticism.  To 
this  end  he  built  and  endowed  new  temples,  re-endowed 
the  priesthoods  where  they  had  been  robbed,  and 
forced  the  return  or  repair  of  such  of  their  lands, 
buildings,  and  possessions  as  had  been  stolen  or  con- 
fiscated ;  at  the  same  time  taking  back  the  privileges 
and  endowments  accorded  to  the  Christians.  For  all 
this,  and  no  less  for  his  antipathy  to  the  vulgar  side 
of  paganism,  he  was  scurrilously  and  insolently  lam- 
pooned, notably  by  the  pagan  and  Christian  mobs  of 
Antioch ;  but  he  attempted  no  vengeance,  though  he 
was  sensitive  enough  to  reply  by  satire.  The  intensely 
malignant  attacks  on  his  memory  by  churchmen  leave 
it  clear  that  he  never  descended  to  persecution,  unless 
we  so  describe  his  action  in  excluding  Christians  from 
teaching  in  the  schools  of  rhetoric,  for  which  he  had 
at  least  the  pretext  that  they  constantly  aspersed  the 
pagan  literature  there  studied,  and  ought  in  con- 
sistency to  have  left  it  alone.  Some  of  them  indeed 
had  earnestly  desired  the  total  suppression  of  those 
very  schools.  What  most  exasperated  his  Christian 
assailants,  it  is  clear,  was  his  sardonic  attitude  to 
Christian  quarrels.  Instead  of  persecuting,  he  pro- 
tected the  factions  from  each  other,  restored  exiled 
heretics,  and  invited  rival  dogmatists  to  dispute  in  his 
presence,  where  their  animosities  served  to  humiliate 
their  creed  to  his  heart's  content.  It  was  the  sting  of 
such  a  memory  that  drove  Gregory  of  Nazianzun, 
bitterly  conscious  of  Christian  hates,  to  such  a  passion 
of  hate  against  Julian,  whose  body  he  would  fain  have 
seen  cast  into  the  common  sewer. 

It  has  been  questioned  whether  the  eagerness  of 
Julian's  desire  to  discredit  Christism  would  not  have 
made  him  a  persecutor  had  he  lived  longer ;  and  such 


REACTION  UNDER  JULIAN.  161 

a  development  is  indeed  conceivable.     His  zeal  was 

such  that  with  all  the  load  of  empire  and  generalship 

on  his  shoulders  he  found  time  in  his  short  reign  to 

write  a  long  treatise  against  the  Christian  books  and 

creed,   of    which   his    full    knowledge   and   excellent 

memory  made  him  a  formidable  critic  ;  and  his  tone 

towards  Athanasius  seems  to  have  grown  more  and 

more   bitter.      It   is   hard   for   the   master   of   thirty 

legions  to  tolerate  opposition  and  to  remain  righteous. 

On  the  other  hand,  Julian  gave  proofs  not  only  of  an 

abnormal  self-restraint,  but  of  an  exceptional  judgment 

in  things  purely  political ;  and  the  very  fact  that  his 

young  enthusiasm  had  led  him  astray,  making  him 

hope  for  a  vital  restoration  of  paganism  out  of  hand, 

would  probably  with  such  a  mind  have  counted  for 

caution  after  the  lesson  had  been  learned.     Falling  in 

battle  with  the  Persians  (363)  after  only  twenty  months 

of  full  power,  he  had  no  time  to  readjust  himself  to 

the  forces  of  things  as  experience  disclosed  them  to 

him  :  he  had  time  only  to  feel  disappointment.     Had 

he  lived  to  form  his  own  judgment  instead  of  merely 

assimilating  the  ideas  of  his  Neo-Platonic  teachers  he 

would  be  in  a  fair  way  to  frame  a  better  philosophy  of 

life   than   either   the   polytheistic   or    the    Christian. 

Such  a  philosophy  had  been  left  by  Epictetus,  to  name 

no  other  ;  and  Julian's  passion  for  rites  and  sacrifices 

was  really  a  falling  below  pagan  wisdom  and  ethics 

current  in  his  time,  as  his  facile  belief  in  myths  was 

a  falling  below  the  pagan  rationalism  set  forth  a  little 

later  by  Macrobius,  and  not  unknown  in  Julian's  day. 

No  less  unworthy  of  the  best  pagan  thought  was  his 

affectation  of  cynic  uncleanliness — an  inverted  foppery 

likely  to  have  passed  with  youth.     A  few  years  must 

have  taught  him  that  men  were  not  to  be  regenerated 

M 


162  FOURTH  CENTURY 

by  pagan  creeds  any  more  than  by  Christian  ;  and  to 
his  laws  for  the  reform  of  administration  he  might 
have  added  some  for  the  reform  of  culture.  Dying  in 
his  prime,  he  has  formed  a  text  for  much  Christian 
rhetoric  to  the  effect  that  he  had  dreamed  a  vain 
dream.  Insofar,  however,  as  that  rhetoric  assumes 
the  indestructibility  of  the  Christian  Church  at  the 
hands  of  pagan  emperors,  it  is  no  sounder  than  the 
most  sanguine  hopes  of  Julian. 

To  say  that  Julian  had  hopelessly  miscalculated  the 
possibilities  of  paganism  is  to  misconceive  the  whole 
sociological  case  if  it  be  implied  that  Christianity 
survived  in  virtue  of  its  dogma  or  doctrine,  and  that 
it  was  on  the  side  of  dogma  or  morality  that  paganism 
failed.  As  a  regenerating  force  Christianity  was  as 
impotent  as  any  pagan  creed  :  it  was  indeed  much 
less  efficacious  than  one  pagan  philosophy  had  been, 
and  had  visibly  set  up  in  the  State  new  ferocities  of 
civil  strife.  Under  the  two  Antonines,  Stoic  principles 
had  governed  the  empire  so  well,  relatively  to  the 
possibilities  of  the  system,  that  many  modern  his- 
torians have  been  fain  to  reckon  theirs  the  high-water 
mark  of  all  European  administration.  No  such  level 
was  ever  reached  in  the  Christian  empire,  from 
Constantine  onwards.  Julian  himself  schemed  more 
solid  reforms  of  administration  in  his  one  year  of 
rule  than  any  of  his  Christian  successors  ever  accom- 
plished, with  the  exceptions  of  Marcian  and  Anastasius ; 
and  could  he  have  foreseen  how  the  empire  was  to 
go  in  Christian  hands  he  would  certainly  have  had 
no  reason  to  alter  his  course.  To  take  the  mere 
actual  continuance  of  Christianity  as  a  proof  of  its 
containing  more  truth  or  virtue  than  the  whole  of 
Paganism  is  to  confuse  biological  survival  with  moral 


REACTION  UNDER  JULIAN.  163 

merit.  "  The  survival  of  the  fittest,"  a  principle 
which  holds  good  of  every  aspect  of  Nature,  is  not  a 
formula  of  moral  discrimination,  but  a  simple  summary 
of  evolution.  The  camel  which  survives  in  a  water- 
less desert  is  not  thereby  proved  a  nobler  animal  than 
the  horse  or  elephant  which  perishes  there.  Chris- 
tianity, as  we  have  seen,  while  utterly  failing  among 
the  Jews,  where  it  had  birth,  had  subsisted  from  the 
first  in  the  pagan  world  (1)  through  adopting  the 
attractive  features  of  Paganism,  and  (2)  because 
of  its  politico-economical  adaptations.  Paganism — 
nominal  paganism,  that  is — disappeared  as  an  institu- 
tion because  such  adaptations  were  not  given  to  it. 

Nor  is  it  reasonable  to  say  that  Julian's  under- 
taking was  impossible.  His  plans  were  indeed  those' 
of  an  inexperienced  enthusiast ;  but  had  he  lived  as 
long  as  Constantine,  and  learned  by  experience,  he 
might  have  witnessed  his  substantial  success  ;  and  a 
century  of  intelligently  continuous  policy  to  the  same 
end  might  have  expelled  Christianity  as  completely 
from  the  Roman  world  as  Buddhism  was  soon  to  be 
expelled  from  India.  No  one  who  has  studied  the 
latter  phenomenon  can  use  the  language  commonly 
held  of  the  attempt  of  Julian.  Buddhism,  repre- 
senting at  least  as  high  a  moral  impetus  as  that  of 
Christism,  had  arisen  and  flourished  greatly  in  direct 
opposition  to  Brahmanism  ;  after  centuries  of  success 
it  is  found  assimilating  all  the  popular  superstitions 
on  which  Brahmanism  lived,  even  as  Christianity 
assimilated  those  of  paganism  ;  and  it  was  either  by 
assimilating  elements  of  Buddhism  on  that  plane  or 
by  such  policy  joined  with  coercive  force  that  the 
Brahmans  finally  eliminated  it  from  their  sphere. 
Had  a  succession  of  Roman  emperors  set  themselves 


164  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

to  create  a  priestly  organisation  of  pagan  cults,  with 
as  good  an  economic  basis  as  that  of  Brahmanism,  or 
as  that  of  Judaism  was  even  after  the  fall  of  the 
Temple,  they  could  have  created  a  force  which  might 
triumph  over  the  new  cult  in  its  own  sphere  even  as 
Brahmanism  and  Judaism  did.  And  if  at  the  same 
time  they  had  left  the  Church  severely  alone,  allowing 
its  perpetual  strifes  to  do  their  own  work,  it  would 
inevitably  have  dissolved  itself  by  sheer  fission  into  a 
hundred  mutually  menacing  factions,  an  easy  foe  for 
a  coherent  paganism.  Mere  spasmodic  persecution 
had  previously  failed,  for  it  is  not  random  persecu- 
tion that  kills  creeds,  though  a  really  relentless  and 
enduring  persecution  can  do  much.  In  the  period 
from  330  to  370,  and  again  in  the  sixth  century,  the 
Persian  kings  did  actually,  by  sheer  bloodshed,  so  far 
crush  orthodox  Christianity  in  their  kingdom  (leaving 
only  the  Nestorians  as  anti-Byzantine  heretics)  that  it 
ceased  to  have  any  importance  there — a  circumstance 
little  noted  by  those  who  dwell  on  its  "  success  "  in 
Europe.  And  the  same  Sassanide  dynasty,  beginning 
in  the  middle  of  the  third  century,  effected  the  syste- 
matic revival  of  the  Mazdean  religion,  which  before 
had  seemed  corrupted  and  discredited  past  remedy. 

Had  Julian  lived  to  learn  in  Persia  the  methods  so 
successfully  used  by  Ardeshir,  he  might  no  less  suc- 
cessfully have  copied  them.  Only  an  idealist  like 
Julian,  of  course,  would  have  thought  the  effort  on 
peaceful  lines  worth  while.  A  much  abler  and  better 
man  than  Jovian  would  reasonably  decide  in  his  place 
that  the  religion  of  Mithra,  having  come  from  the 
triumphant  Persian  enemy,  could  hardly  continue  to  be 
that  of  the  Roman  army ;  and  that  the  most  politic 
course  was  to  revert  to  the  cult  which  Julian  had 


DISESTABLISHMENT  OF  PAGANISM.  NJo 

opposed,  and  whose  champions  saw  in  his  death  the 
hand  of  their  God  working  for  them.  Nonetheless, 
the  common  verdict  on  Julian  as  the  victim  of  a 
hopeless  delusion  is  hardly  better  founded  than  the 
gross  fable  that  on  receiving  his  death-wound  he 
cried,  "  Thou  hast  conquered,  Galilean."  The  Chris- 
tians, indeed,  might  well  exult  and  fabulise  over  his 
death.  It  probably  made  all  the  difference  between 
prosperity  and  collapse  for  their  creed,  already  riven 
in  irreconcilable  factions,  and  capable  of  a  general 
cohesion  only  through  the  coercive  power  of  the  State. 

4. 

§  ^?H  Re-establishment :  Disestablishment  of  Paganism. 

It  is  significant  that  neither  the  weak  Jovian,  thrust 
on  the  throne  by  a  cabal  of  Christian  officers  at  the 
death  of  Julian,  nor  the  forceful  Valentinian  who 
succeeded  him,  attempted  to  persecute  paganism, 
though  both  were  professed  Christians.  In  the  asser- 
tions of  the  ecclesiastical  historians  to  the  contrary, 
in  the  next  century,  the  wish  was  father  to  the 
thought.  Jovian's  ignominious  retreat  from  Persia 
was  made  after  open  pagan  auguries  ;  the  nominally 
Christian  senate  of  Constantinople  sent  him  a  deputa- 
tion headed  by  the  pagan  Themistius,  who  exhorted 
him  on  high  grounds  of  pagan  ethics  to  practise  an 
absolute  toleration  ;  and  he  did,  save  as  regards  the 
continued  crusade  against  secret  magical  rites,  though 
he  re-established  the  Christians  in  many  of  their 
privileges.  Of  Yalentinian  it  has  been  said  that  he 
of  all  the  Christian  emperors  best  understood  and 
maintained  freedom  of  worship ;  and  beyond  confis- 
cating to  the  imperial  domain  the  possessions  formerly 


166  FOURTH  CENTUEY. 

taken  from  pagan  temples  and  restored  to  them  by 
Julian,  he  left  them  unmolested.  Pagan  priests  of 
the  higher  grades  he  treated  with  greater  fiscal  favour 
than  had  been  shown  to  them  even  by  Julian,  giving 
them  immunities  and  honours  which  exasperated  the 
Christians.  It  may  have  been  the  fact  of  his  ruling 
the  still  strongly  pagan  West  that  made  Valentinian 
thus  propitiate  the  old  priesthoods ;  but  his  brother 
Yalens,  who  ruled  the  East,  enforced  the  same  tole- 
rance, save  insofar  as  he,  an  Arian,  persecuted  the 
Athanasians.  His  forcing  of  monks  to  re-enter  the 
curia,  that  is,  to  resume  the  burdens  of  municipal 
taxation,  may  have  been  motived  by  dislike  of  them, 
but  was  a  reasonable  fiscal  measure.  The  cruel  per- 
secution of  diviners,  carried  on  by  both  brothers,  was 
the  outcome  of  both  fear  and  anger  at  the  rapid 
spread  of  divination,  to  which  was  devoted  at  that 
period  an  extensive  literature :  the  public  or  official 
Roman  divination  by  augury  was  expressly  permitted, 
as  were  the  Eleusinian  mysteries.  All  the  while, 
Christians  were  little  less  given  to  divination  than 
pagans. 

Thus  in  the  thirty  years  from  the  death  of 
Constantine  to  the  accession  of  Theodosius  the  Great, 
while  the  Church  continued  to  grow  in  wealth,  it  can 
have  made  little  progress  politically,  and  it  certainly 
made  none  morally.  The  law  of  Valentinian  against 
the  gain-seeking  monks  and  priests  of  Rome  is  the 
testimony  of  a  Christian  emperor  to  the  new  demo- 
ralisation set  up  by  his  Church.  Perhaps  on  pagan 
pressure,  but  apparently  with  emphasis,  he  forbade 
ecclesiastics  to  receive  personal  gifts  or  legacies  from 
the  women  of  property  to  whom  they  acted  as 
spiritual  advisers.  Such  a  law  was  of  course 


DISESTABLISHMENT  OF  PAGANISM.  167 

evaded  by  such  expedients  as  trusteeships :  greed 
was  not  to  be  baulked  by  legal  vetoes.  The 
higher  clergy  showed  the  same  instincts ;  and  in 
the  final  struggle  of  Damasus  and  Ursinus  to 
secure  by  physical  force  the  episcopal  chair  of  Rome 
(366),  one  hundred  and  thirty-seven  dead  bodies  were 
counted  in  the  basilica,  Damasus  having  hired 
gladiators  to  carry  his  point.  In  the  provinces, 
doubtless,  the  church  was  often  better  represented  ; 
and  the  new  species  of  ckorepiscopi  or  rural  bishops 
must  have  included  some  estimable  men ;  but  at  all 
the  great  Christian  centres  reigned  violence,  greed, 
and  hate.  In  North  Africa  the  feud  between  the 
Donatists  and  the  rest  of  the  Church  had  reached  the 
form  of  a  chronic  civil  war,  in  which  Donatist  peasant 
fanatics,  called  Circumcelliones,  met  the  official  perse- 
cution by  guerilla  warfare  of  the  savagest  sort.  In 
the  East,  the  furious  strifes  between  Arians  and 
Athanasians  were  sufficient  to  discredit  the  entire 
Church  as  a  political  factor  ;  and  the  better  pagans 
saw  in  it  a  much  worse  ethical  failure  than  could  be 
charged  on  their  own  philosophies.  "  Make  me  bishop 
of  Rome,"  said  the  pagan  prefect  Praetextatus  jes- 
tingly to  Damasus,  "  and  I  will  be  a  Christian." 
What  rational  element  lay  in  Arianism  was  counter- 
vailed by  the  corruption  set  up  by  court  favour ;  and 
orthodoxy  found  its  account  in  popular  ignorance. 
One  of  the  last  notably  philosophic  heretics  was 
Photinus,  bishop  of  Sirmium,  who  in  343  revived  the 
doctrine  of  a  "  modal  "  Trinity.  Anathematised  and 
ostracised  by  Athanasians  and  Arians  alike,  he  died  in 
exile. 

The  accession  (379)  of  Theodosius,  made  co-emperor 
by  Gratian,  son  of  Yalentinian,  on  the  fall  of  Yalens, 


168  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

marks  the  final  establishment  of  Trinitarian  Chris- 
tianity, with  the  official  suppression  of  Arianisin  and 
paganism.  The  young  Gratian  had  been  partly 
educated  under  Bishop  Ambrose  of  Milan,  one  of  the 
first  notable  types  of  masterful  ecclesiastic ;  and 
under  that  influence  he  confiscated  the  lands  of  the 
pagan  temples  in  the  West,  withdrew  the  privileges  of 
the  priests,  and  caused  to  be  removed  from  the  Senate 
at  Rome  the  ancient  and  sacred  statue  of  the  Goddess 
Victory,  formerly  removed  by  Constantius  and  restored 
by  Julian.  Fiscal  needs  seem  to  have  had  much  to 
do  with  the  confiscations,  for  the  economic  life  of  the 
western  empire  was  steadily  sinking.  The  young 
emperor  did  not  attempt  to  prohibit  pagan  worship  or 
abolish  the  right  of  the  temples  to  receive  legacies  ; 
and  though  he  is  said  to  have  refused  the  title  of 
Pontifex  Maximus  it  seems  to  have  been  officially 
given  to  him.  His  anti-pagan  policy,  however,  seems 
to  have  counted  for  something  in  his  unpopularity, 
which  became  so  great  that  when  Maximus  revolted 
in  Britain  and  invaded  Gaul,  Gratian  was  abandoned 
on  all  hands.  Maximus  too  was  a  Christian — another 
proof  that  since  Constantine  many  military  men  had 
come  to  think  "  the  luck  was  changed  " — and  though 
he  conciliated  the  pagans  he  did  not  re-endow  their 
cults.  It  was  under  his  auspices,  too,  that  Priscillian, 
bishop  of  Avila,  in  Spain,  who  had  adopted  Gnostic 
views  closely  resembling  those  of  the  Manichseans, 
and  had  been  banished  under  Gratian,  was  tried  in 
Gaul  for  his  heresy,  put  to  the  torture,  and  executed 
at  Treves  with  several  of  his  followers.  A  new  step 
had  thus  been  taken  in  the  process  of  establishment, 
so  that  when  Theodosius  overthrew  Maximus  and  left 
the  empire  of  the  west  to  the  young  Yalentinian,  the 


DISESTABLISHMENT  OF  PAGANISM.  169 

cause  of  official  paganism  was  much  weakened.  And 
when  Valentiniaii  in  turn  was  deposed  and  slain  by 
the  pagan  party,  though  Ambrose  confessedly  thought 
the  Christian  cause  in  the  west  was  lost,  Eugenius 
did  not  venture  to  restore  to  the  priesthoods  the 
possessions  and  revenues  which  had  been  turned  to 
the  support  of  the  decaying  State,  menaced  all  along 
the  north  by  a  hungry  barbarism  that  grew  ever  more 
conscious  of  its  power,  and  of  the  impotence  of  the 
imperial  colossus. 

When  Eugenius  and  his  party  in  turn  fell  before 
Theodosius,  the  cause  of  State-paganism  was  visibly 
lost ;  and  though  Theodosius  died  in  the  following 
year  (395)  he  left  the  old  cults  finally  disestablished 
in  Italy  as  well  as  in  the  East.  In  his  reign  of 
sixteen  years  in  the  East  he  had  as  far  as  possible 
suppressed  Arianism,  depriving  the  Arians  of  their 
churches ;  had  caused  or  permitted  many  of  the 
already  disendowed  pagan  temples  to  be  robbed  and 
dismantled  ;  and  had  prohibited  all  pagan  worships, 
besides  continuing  the  crusade  against  divination. 
Under  the  shelter  of  such  persecuting  edicts,  monks 
and  other  enterprising  Christians,  calling  themselves 
"  reformers,"  were  at  liberty  everywhere  to  plunder 
or  destroy  the  shrines,  and  even  to  secure  the  lands 
of  pagans  on  the  pretence  that  they  had  defied  the 
law  and  offered  sacrifices.  So  gross  became  the  demo- 
ralisation that  Theodosius,  more  scrupulous  than  the 
clergy,  at  length  passed  a  law  to  punish  the  Christian 
spoilers ;  but  this  could  not  save  the  pagans.  Many 
of  them,  to  save  themselves,  affected  conversion,  and 
went  to  Christian  altars  to  do  inward  reverence  to 
their  old  Gods.  There  can  have  been  no  worthy 
process  of  moral  suasion  under  such  circumstances. 


170  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

Coercion,   applauded    by  Augustine  and    personally 
practised  by  such  Christian  leaders  as  St.  Martin  of 
Tours,  became  the  normal  procedure  ;  and  naturally 
the  constrained  converts  brought  with  them  into  the 
Church  all  the  credences  of  their  previous  life.     For 
the   Church,   such    a    triumph    was    glory    enough, 
especially  when  there  was  added  to  it  a  law  by  which 
all  Christian  offenders,  clerical  or  lay,  were  amenable  to 
trial  and  punishable  before  ecclesiastical  tribunals  only. 
It  does  not  appear  that  the  many  cruel  laws  of 
Theodosius  against  heretics  and  pagans  were  carried 
out  to  the  letter  :  it  had  sufficed  for  the  overthrow  of 
official  paganism  that  it  should  be  cut  off  from  its 
financial  basis;  and  the  emperor  not  only  tolerated 
but  employed  professed  pagans,  being  even  willing  to 
grant  to  those  of  Rome  concessions  which  Ambrose 
could  not  endure.     On  their  part  the  pagans,  though 
still    very    numerous,   were   non-resistant.     Broadly 
speaking,  they  consisted  of  two  sorts — the  more  or  less 
philosophic  few,  who  were  for  the  most  part  mono- 
theists,  inclined  to  see  in  all  Gods  mere  symbols  of 
the  central  power  of  the  universe ;  and  the  unphilo- 
sophic  multitude,  high  and  low,  who  believed  by  habit, 
and   whose   spiritual   needs   were    on    the    ordinary 
Christian    plane.     The  former   sort   were   not  likely 
to    battle    for    the   old    machinery  of    sacrifice    and 
invocation ;  and  the  latter,  with  none  to  lead  them, 
were  not  hard  to  turn,  when  once  new  habits  had 
time   to   grow.    Whoever   gave    them  a  liturgy  and 
rites   and   sacraments,   with   shrines   and    places    of 
adoration,  might  count  on  satisfying  their  religious 
learnings  ;    and  this  the  Christian  organisation  was 
zealously  bent  on  doing.     Their  festivals  were  pre- 
served and  adapted;  their  local "  heroes  "  had  become 


DISESTABLISHMENT  OF  PAGANISM.  171 

Christian  martyrs  and  patron  saints ;  their  mysteries 
were  duplicated ;  their  holy  places  were  but  new-named ; 
their  cruder  ideals  were  embraced.  In  the  way  of 
ceremonial,  as  Mosheim  avows,  there  was  "  little 
difference  in  those  times  between  the  public  worship 
of  the  Christians  and  that  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans." 
The  lititus  of  the  augur  had  become  the  crozier  of  the 
bishop  ;  the  mitres  and  tiaras  of  the  heathen  priests 
were  duly  transferred  to  the  new  hierarchy ;  and  their 
processions  were  as  nearly  as  possible  copies  of  those 
of  the  great  ceremonial  cults  of  Egypt  and  the  East. 
A  sample  of  the  process  of  adaptation  lies  in  the 
ecclesiastical  calendar,  where  in  the  month  of  October 
are  (or  were)  commemorated  on  three  successive  days 
Saint  Bacchus,  Saint  Demetrius,  and  Saints  Dionysos, 
Rusticus,  and  Eleutherius,  all  described  as  martyrs. 
The  five  names  are  simply  those  of  the  God  Dionysos, 
whose  rustic  festival  was  held  at  that  season.  In  the 
same  way,  Osiris  becomes  St.  Onuphrius,  from  his 
Coptic  name,  Onufri.  It  is  probable,  again,  that 
from  the  year  376,  when  the  shrine  of  Mithra  at 
Rome  was  destroyed  by  Christian  violence,  the  Roman 
Pope,  who  succeeded  the  high  priest  of  Mithra 
at  the  Vatican  mount,  sat  in  the  Mithraic  sacred 
chair,  as  he  does  at  this  day.  As  representing  Peter, 
he  bore  Mithra' s  special  symbols.  And  where  the  higher 
paganism  had  come  to  repudiate  the  popular  religion 
of  trappings  and  ceremonial  no  less  than  that  of 
sacrifice  and  that  of  mere  self-mortification,  established 
Christianity  placed  the  essence  of  religion  anew  in 
external  usages  on  the  one  hand  and  asceticism  on  the 
other;  cherishing  the  while  every  "  superstition  "  of 
the  past,  and  beginning  a  species  of  image-worship 
that  the  past  had  hardly  known.  What  was 


172  FOUKTH  CENTURY. 

overthrown  was  merely  public  or  official  worship  :  the 
religious  essentials  of  paganism — to  wit,  polytheism ; 
the  belief  in  the  intercession  of  subordinate  spiritual 
powers ;  the  principles  of  sacrifice  and  propitiation, 
penance  and  atonement;  the  special  adoration  of  local 
shrines  and  images ;  the  practice  of  ritual  mysteries 
and  imposing  ceremonies  ;  the  public  association  of  a 
worship  with  the  fortunes  of  the  State — all  these  were 
preserved  in  the  Catholic  Church,  with  only  the  names 
changed.  There  was  no  "  destruction  of  paganism," 
there  was  merely  transformation.  And  so  immeasur- 
ably slow  are  the  transformations  of  national  habit 
that  for  many  generations  even  the  terminology  and  the 
specific  usages  of  paganism  survived  in  every  aspect 
save  that  of  open  worship ;  so  that  Theodosius  and 
his  sons  were  fain  to  pass  law  after  law  penalising 
those  who  ventured  to  revert  from  Christianity  to 
paganism.  Such  reversions  were  the  measure  of  the 
moral  as  compared  with  the  official  success  of 
Christianity. 

The  last  act  in  the  official  crusade  against  paganism, 
open  spoliation,  had  become  possible  at  length  through 
the  sheer  decadence  of  character  in  the  empire.  In 
the  west,  so-called  Romans  had  lived  on  a  tradition  of 
ancient  rule  till  they  were  become  as  masquerading 
apes  in  the  light  of  the  retrospect :  all  that  was  left  of 
patrician  semblance  was  a  faculty  for  declamation, 
pedantry,  and  pomp.  The  repeated  discussions  over 
the  removal  of  the  statue  of  Victory  were  on  the 
senatorial  side  a  tissue  of  artificial  rhetoric,  on  the 
Christian  a  mixture  of  frank  bigotry  and  bad  sophistry. 
Religious  fanaticism,  the  last  and  lowest  form  of  moral 
energy,  abounded  only  with  the  mob ;  and  the 
formless  pagan  crowd,  never  in  touch  with  priests 


DISESTABLISHMENT  OF  PAGANISM. 


173 


or  senators,  and  never  conscious  of  a  common  centre, 
was  useless  for  political  purposes  when  at  length  the 
upper  class  had  need  of  it ;  while  the  much  smaller 
Christian  mob,  drilled  and  incited  to  a  common 
fervour,  was  a  force  formidable  even  to  the  autocrat. 
Patricians  whose  line  had  for  centuries  cringed 
in  all  things  political  were  not  the  men  to  lose 
their  lives  for  a  ceremonial ;  and  those  of  them 
who  as  priests  had  been  plundered  by  Gratian  and 
Theodosius  were  on  this  side  also  devoid  of  organisa- 
tion, and  incapable  of  joint  action.  The  rule  of 
Valentinian  had  forced  the  Christian  Church  to  remain 
in  touch  with  its  original  and  popular  sources  of 
revenue ;  whereas  the  pagan  priesthoods,  once  de- 
prived of  stipends  and  domains,  had  nowhere  to  turn 
to,  and  may  be  said  to  have  fallen  without  a  blow, 
unless  the  deposition  of  Valentinian  II.  by  Arbogastes, 
and  the  short  usurpation  of  Eugenius,  be  regarded  as 
their  last  official  effort  to  survive.  But  the  cause  of 
empire  in  the  west  was  no  less  moribund  than  that  of 
the  ancient  Gods.  Italy  was  reaching  the  last  stage 
of  economic  and  military  depletion.  The  richest 
revenue-yielding  provinces  of  the  empire  lay  in  Africa 
and  the  East;  and  when  there  came  the  fatal  struggle 
with  barbarism,  the  eastern  and  richer  part  of  the 
empire,  so  long  wont  to  act  independently  of  the 
western,  let  that  succumb.  It  was  at  least  drama- 
tically fit  that  the  multiform  and  fortuitous  contexture 
of  Roman  paganism,  evolved  like  the  empire  itself  by 
a  long  series  of  instinctive  acts  and  adaptations, 
unruled  by  any  higher  wisdom,  should  yield  up  its 
official  form  and  sustenance  to  feed  the  dying  body 
politic,  and  should  be  expunged  from  the  face  of  the 
State  before  that  was  overthrown.  Augustine  might 


174  FOURTH  CENTURY. 

say  what  he  would  to  the  reproachful  pagans,  but  the 
last  humiliation  came  under  Christian  auspices ;  and 
the  fanatical  Jerome,  type  of  the  transformation  of 
Roman  energy  from  action  to  private  pietism,  had 
to  weep  in  his  old  age  that  his  cult  could  not  save  the 
immemorial  city  whose  very  name  had  so  long  ruled 
the  world,  and  was  almost  the  last  semblance  of  a 
great  thing  left  in  it. 

It  consisted  with  the  universal  intellectual  decadence 
that  neither  the  pagans  nor  the  Christians  realised 
the  nature  of  either  the  religious  or  the  political 
evolution,  the  former  regarding  the  new  faith  as  a 
blasphemy  which  had  brought  on  the  empire  the  ruinous 
wrath  of  the  Gods ;  the  latter  calling  the  barbaric 
invasion  a  divine  punishment  both  of  pagan  and 
Christian  wickedness,  and  seeing  in  the  decline  of  all 
pagan  worship  the  defeat  of  a  false  faith  by  a  true. 
Neither  had  the  slightest  perception  of  the  real  and 
human  causation  ;  the  degradation  of  the  peoples  by 
the  yoke  of  Rome  ;  the  economic  ruin  and  moral 
paralysis  of  Rome  by  sheer  empire  :  and  as  little 
could  they  realise  that  the  fortunes  of  the  creeds  were 
natural  socio-political  sequences.  What  had  socially 
happened  was  essentially  an  economic  process,  howbeit 
one  set  up  by  a  religious  credence.  Paganism  as  a 
public  system  disappeared  because  it  was  deprived  of 
all  its  revenues ;  Christianity  as  a  system  finally 
flourished  because  the  church  was  legally  empowered 
to  receive  donations  and  legacies  without  limit,  and 
debarred  from  parting  with  any  of  its  property.  Any 
corporation  whatever,  any  creed  whatever,  would  have 
flourished  on  such  a  basis ;  while  only  a  priesthood 
capable  of  building  up  a  voluntary  revenue  as  the 
Christian  church  had  originally  done  could  survive 


DISESTABLISHMENT  OF  PAGANISM.  175 

on  pagan  lines  after  the  Christian  creed  had  been 
established.  The  pagan  priesthoods,  originally  gene- 
rated on  a  totally  different  footing,  could  not  learn 
the  economic  lesson,  could  not  readjust  themselves  to 
a  process  which,  as  we  have  seen,  originated  in  con- 
ditions of  fanatical  nonconformity,  which  latter-day 
paganism  could  not  reproduce.  But  so  far  were  the 
mental  habitudes  and  the  specific  beliefs  of  paganism 
from  disappearing  that  Christian  historians  in  our 
own  day  bitterly  denounce  it  for  "infecting"  their 
"  revealed  "  creed.  What  had  really  died  out  on  the 
"spiritual  "  side  was  the  primitive  ideal  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  What  survived  as  Christianity  was 
really  an  idolatrous  polytheism. 


CHAPTER  III. 

FAILURE    WITH    SURVIVAL. 

§  1.  The  Overthroiv  of  Arianism. 

THEODOSIUS  was  the  last  ruler  of  the  empire  proper 
who  was  capable  of  leading  his  army ;  and  from  his 
death  onwards  the  fall  of  the  western  section  pro- 
ceeded at  headlong  rate.  His  sons,  Honorius  and 
Arcadius,  were  worse  weaklings  than  even  the  sons  of 
Yalentinian  :  to  fit  for  the  throne  a  child  born  in  the 
purple,  always  a  hard  task,  seemed  impossible  under 
Christianity.  At  the  end  of  the  fourth  century  begins 
the  series  of  convulsions  which  mark  the  end  of  the 
Roman  empire  properly  so-called.  In  the  year  after 
Theodosius'  death,  Alaric  invaded  and  ravaged 
Greece ;  and,  manoeuvred  thence  by  Stilicho,  pro- 
ceeded to  invade  Italy.  The  tentative  character  of 
these  unsuccessful  first  attempts,  and  of  that  of 
Rhadagast,  only  made  more  sure  the  triumph  of  the 
later  ;  and  invasion  followed  on  invasion,  till  by  the 
middle  of  the  fifth  century  the  West  had  lost  Gaul, 
Spain,  and  Africa  ;  and  in  the  year  476  Rome,  thrice 
sacked,  received  at  last  a  barbarian  king. 

Through  all  these  storms  Christianity  more  than 
held  its  ground.  The  invaders  were  Christians,  like 
the  invaded,  albeit  heretics  ;  the  first  conversion  of 
Goths  by  the  Arian  Ulphilas  in  the  previous  century 
having  been  widely  extended.  The  form  of  the 

17G 


THE  OVERTHKOW  OF  AEIANISM.  177 

dogma  mattered  nothing  to  the  political  function  of 
the  church,  which  was,  among  the  barbarians  as  in 
the  empire,  to  promote  centralisation  up  to  the  point 
at  which  schism  became  ungovernable.  The  Teutonic 
chieftains,  it  is  clear,  saw  in  the  Christian  church  a 
means  of  partially  welding  their  peoples  somewhat  as 
Home  had  been  welded ;  and  while  Arianism  held  the 
ground  among  them,  it  furthered  the  unity  that  in  the 
Eastern  empire  was  now  being  lost.  And  inasmuch 
as  normal  community  of  creed  made  possible  an 
assimilation  between  the  invaders  and  the  conquered, 
Christianity  positively  facilitated  the  fall  of  the 
Western  empire.  In  Africa,  again,  where  the 
Donatists,  with  their  four  hundred  bishops,  had 
been  freshly  persecuted  under  Honorius,  the  schism 
helped  the  invading  Vandals,  who  paid  for  the 
Donatists'  help  by  giving  them  freedom  of  worship. 
It  is  probable  that  the  Manichaeans,  who  were 
numerous  in  the  same  province,  and  who  were  also 
much  persecuted,  at  first  welcomed  the  invaders.  So 
obvious  was  the  risk  of  such  alienations  of  heretics 
that  Honorius,  listening  for  a  moment  to  the  advice 
of  tolerant  pagans,  went  so  far  as  to  issue  a  law  of 
general  toleration.  This,  however,  the  orthodox 
clergy  forced  him  to  repeal,  and  the  persecution  of 
Donatists  went  from  bad  to  worse.  All  the  while  the 
old  paganism  was  still  so  common  in  the  West  that 
Honorius,  who  on  the  advice  of  his  pious  minister 
Olympius,  after  the  fall  of  Stilicho,  had  sought  to 
expel  by  edict  all  pagans  and  Arians  from  the  service 
of  the  State,  was  fain  later  to  entreat  leading  pagans 
to  return.  But  the  Arian  Goths  in  turn  showed  the 
pagans  no  favour;  in  Greece,  Alaric  even  broke  up 
the  Eleusinian  mysteries  ;  and  the  Vandals  in  Africa 

N 


178  FIFTH  CENTUKY. 

soon  persecuted  the  Manichaeans  even  more  bloodily 
than  they  did  the  Athanasians,  whom  they  went  far 
to  drive  out  of  the  province.  In  this  way  they  in  turn 
weakened  their  State,  besides  otherwise  undergoing 
the  social  diseases  of  empire,  so  that  in  the  sixth 
century  Belisarius  was  able  to  reconquer  it  for 
Justinian,  the  emperor  of  the  East.  In  Spain,  con- 
quered by  the  Arian  Visigoths,  there  was  relative 
toleration.  The  Arian  clergy,  however,  being  mostly 
unlettered  Teutons,  were  less  useful  instruments  to 
the  ruler  than  Catholics  could  be  ;  and  late  in  the 
sixth  century  a  new  king  at  his  accession  there 
adopted  Trinitarianism. 

The  further  the  orthodox  faith  went,  the  more 
dangerous,  it  was  clear,  was  the  position  of  the 
remaining  Arian  kingdoms,  since  their  heresy  was 
always  a  pretext  for  a  union  of  the  others  to  crush 
them.  A  barbarian  king,  told  by  his  clergy  that  he 
did  God  service  in  destroying  heretics,  needed  little 
further  encouragement  to  war ;  and  such  counsel  the 
orthodox  Church  was  always  ready  to  give.  Already 
at  the  end  of  the  fifth  century  the  immigrant  Franks 
established  in  Gaul  under  Clovis  were  "  converted  "  in 
mass,  by  the  mere  fiat  of  their  king,  to  orthodox 
Christianity  ;  and  the  reconquest  of  Italy  by  Belisarius 
and  Narses  further  strengthened  the  Catholic  cause. 
It  was  thus  good  policy  for  the  Lombards,  who  in 
their  turn  conquered  the  north  and  south  but  never 
the  centre  of  Italy,  to  begin  to  give  up  their  Arianism  at 
the  end  of  the  century.  It  is  probable,  however,  that 
in  any  case  Arianism  would  in  course  of  time  have 
fallen  in  the  new  barbaric  States  as  it  did  in  the 
eastern  empire.  The  toleration  given  by  Theodoric 
in  Italy,  and  by  the  earlier  Arian  Goths  in  Spain  and 


THE  OVERTHEOW  OF  ARIANISM.  179 

Gaul,  to  the  Catholic  creed,  could  avail  nothing  to 
stay  the  orthodox  purpose  of  destroying  heresy  ;  and 
the  element  of  rationalism  on  the  Arian  side  was 
precisely  what  could  least  prosper  in  an  era  of 
ignorance.  Thus  the  Catholic  creed  had  time  and 
credulity  on  its  side ;  and,  Christianity  at  that  stage 
being  above  all  things  politically  useful  as  an  aid  to 
arbitrary  government,  the  most  pronounced  and  sacer- 
dotal and  superstitious  form  of  Christianity  must  be 
the  most  useful  from  a  calculating  monarch's  point  of 
view. 

Such,  broadly,  was  the  development  in  the  East, 
where  the  virtual  suppression  or  expulsion  of  Arianism 
by  Theodosius  and  his  successors  showed  what  per- 
sistent persecution  could  do  when  carried  on  by  both 
penal  and  economic  means,  through  a  hierarchy  who 
knew  how  and  where  to  strike,  and  had  their  hearts  in 
the  work.  Arianism  was  not  destroyed  ;  indeed  all  of 
the  great  heresies  of  the  first  five  centuries — Mar- 
cionism,  Montanism,  Arianism,  Manichaeism,  Mono- 
physitism,  to  say  nothing  of  the  Nestorian  Church  in 
Asia — are  found  subsisting  in  the  eastern  empire  in 
the  seventh  century,  despite  both  disendowment  and 
cruel  persecution,  thus  in  effect  proving  that  had 
Christianity  been  simply  left  alone,  neither  helped 
nor  attacked  by  the  State,  it  would  have  been  dissolved 
in  a  score  of  warring  sects  by  the  fifth  century.  The 
Manichaeans  were  as  inflexible  as  ever  were  any  of  the 
Christists ;  and  as  against  the  convictions  of  the 
heretics  in  general  the  moral  failure  of  the  orthodox 
Church  was  absolute.  By  executing  Priscillian  in  the 
fourth  century  it  simply  inflamed  his  following,  which 
was  strong  in  Spain  two  hundred  years  later.  But 
though  the  endowed  clergy  could  not  convert  or 


180  SIXTH  CENTURY. 

exterminate  the  others,  they  could  keep  them  poor 
and  ostracised,  and  wield  against  them  the  subsidised 
mob  as  well  as  the  whole  machinery  of  the  State. 
Against  such  oppression  the  heretics  could  not  com- 
pete as  the  early  Jesuists  had  done  against  the 
careless  course  of  paganism,  with  its  isolated  priests, 
so  much  more  often  indifferent  than  fanatical. 

Where  early  Christism  had  met  the  cravings  alike 
of  ascetics,  of  mystics,  of  simple  emotionalists,  and 
of  poor  seekers  after  a  concrete  God  not  hedged 
around  with  altars  and  priests,  thus  appealing  both  to 
heretic  Jews  and  to  heretic  Gentiles,  the  later  heresies 
ostensibly  appealed  as  a  rule  either  to  ascetics  or  to 
dogmatists,  and  offered  nothing  to  the  multitude  that 
it  could  not  find  within  the  Church,  shades  of  dogma 
apart.  Manichaeism  indeed  remained  to  prove  that 
what  was  virtually  a  new  religion  could  rise  and 
persist  for  centuries  in  the  teeth  of  Christianity,  by 
methods  and  appeals  very  like  those  of  Christism ; 
but  it  also  served  to  prove  that  organised  and  endowed 
Christianity,  inspired  by  an  enduring  hate,  could  check 
and  overshadow  the  rival  religion  where  unorganised 
paganism,  for  lack  of  general  animus  and  systematic 
official  zeal,  had  failed  to  subdue  Christianity.  And 
the  political  elimination  of  nominal  Arianism  in  the 
West  served  to  prove  afresh  that  orthodoxy  finally 
triumphed  in  that  regard  by  enlisting  on  its  side  not 
only  the  instincts  of  polytheism  but  the  interests  of 
monarchy.  It  is  significant  that,  driven  from  the 
empire,  Arianism  flourished  best  in  the  barbarian 
world,  where  for  a  time  some  mental  freedom  might 
be  supposed  to  subsist.  If  any  rational  motive  is  to 
be  assigned  for  the  zealous  adoption  of  the  Athanasian 
creed  by  such  rulers  as  Theodosius,  it  is  presumably 


THE  COST  OF  ORTHODOXY.  181 

their  perception  that  the  most  irrational  dogma  went 
best  with  discipline  :  that  the  spirit  which  presumed 
to  rationalise  religion  was  the  less  ready  for  political 
obedience.  In  any  case,  the  triumph  of  orthodoxy 
went  step  for  step  not  only  with  intellectual  dissolu- 
tion and  moral  paralysis,  but  with  the  disruption  of 
the  empire. 

§  2.  The  Cost  of  Orthodoxy. 

The  constant  law  of  theological  development  was 
that  all  stirrings  of  reason  were  anathematised  as 
heresy,  and  that  dogmas  became  orthodox  in  the  ratio 
of  their  extravagance.  Paganising  and  polytheistic 
heresy  such  as  that  of  the  Collyridians  of  Arabia 
(4th  c.),  who  worshipped  Mary  as  a  Goddess  and 
offered  her  cakes  (collyridce)  as  their  mothers  had 
done  to  Ashtaroth,  ran  little  risk  :  their  heresy  in  fact 
was  on  the  way  to  be  orthodoxy.  Saner  heresies 
fared  differently.  Late  in  the  fourth  century  we 
find  the  Italian  monk  Jovinian  opposing  asceticism, 
urging  a  rational  morality,  and  explaining  that  Mary 
ceased  to  be  a  virgin  on  bringing  forth  Jesus  ;  for 
which  offences  he  was  condemned  in  Church  Councils, 
flogged,  and  banished  to  a  desolate  island.  A  little 
later,  Vigilantius,  a  presbyter  from  Gaul,  ventured  to 
oppose  the  growing  worship  of  relics,  prayers  to  saints, 
the  use  of  sacred  tapers,  vigils,  and  pilgrimages,  as 
well  as  to  decry  many  current  miracles.  So  furious 
was  the  outcry  of  Jerome  in  his  case  that  he  had  to 
hold  his  peace  if  he  would  save  his  life.  No  leading 
churchman  said  a  word  for  either  reformer :  Ambrose 
and  Jerome  both  condemned  Jovinian ;  and  the 
language  of  Jerome  against  Vigilantius  is  a  revelation 


182  FIFTH  CENTUEY. 

of  the  new  possibilities  of  intellectual  malice  created 
by  creed.  On  this  side,  human  nature  had  reverted 
several  degrees  to  Hebraism.  Later  still,  the  heresy 
of  Pelagius,  also  a  western,  aroused  a  bitter  orthodox 
opposition,  led  by  Augustine.  Pelagius  (a  name  pro- 
bably the  Grecised  form  of  the  British  name  Morgan) 
and  Ccelestius,  an  Irishman,  both  monks  in  Eome  about 
the  years  400-410,  drew  up  a  systematic  argument 
against  the  doctrines  of  human  depravity,  predestina- 
tion, and  salvation  by  grace,  denied  the  damnation  of 
unbaptised  infants  and  virtuous  unbaptised  adults, 
rejected  the  Biblical  teaching  that  Adam  died  in  con- 
sequence of  his  sin  or  entailed  sin  on  posterity,  and 
taught  a  relatively  rational  ethic.  Flying  from  Rome 
on  Alaric's  invasion,  they  went,  Coelestius  to  Carthage 
and  Pelagius  to  the  East ;  the  former  to  be  condemned 
by  a  council  at  Carthage  (412),  the  latter  to  be  for  a 
time  supported  against  attacks,  but  later  to  be  con- 
demned likewise.  Henceforth  the  half -suppressed 
vestiges  of  Pelagianism  (chiefly  in  the  hesitating  form 
of  semi-Pelagianism,  according  to  which  God  fore- 
ordained good  but  merely  foreknew  evil)  were  the 
only  signs  left  in  the  West,  apart  from  Arianism,  of 
the  spirit  of  critical  reason,  till  the  first  stirrings  of 
the  renascence. 

In  the  West,  it  will  be  observed,  spontaneous  heresy 
had  run  to  questions  of  action  and  ethics,  partly 
following  a  Roman  tradition  of  concern  for  conduct, 
partly  expressing  barbarian  common-sense.  To  such 
thought,  Christianity  was  alien,  and  it  was  cried  down 
by  voluble  theologians  like  Augustine,  backed,  doubt- 
less, not  only  by  the  average  obedient  priest,  but  by 
some  who  saw  that  the  principles  of  Pelagius, 
logically  carried  out,  made  an  end  on  the  one  hand  of 


THE  COST  OF  ORTHODOXY. 


183 


the  whole  Christian  scheme,  and  on  the  other  of  the 
conception  of  an  omnipotent  God.  Such  reasoners 
must  equally  have  seen  that  the  Augustinian  dogmas 
of  predestination  and  grace  made  an  end  of  human 
responsibility;  and  this  was  urged  by  some  Pelagians, 
but  with  no  effect.  The  irrational  dogma  best  con- 
sisted with  the  functions  and  finance  of  the  church, 
and  it  was  ecclesiastically  established  accordingly. 

In  the  East,  though  there  also  Pelagius  found 
followers,  spontaneous  heresy,  as  we  have  seen,  was 
usually  a  matter  of  abstract  dogma,  as  in  the  schisms 
of  Praxeas,  Sabellius,  Paul  of  Samosata,  Arius,  and 
the  Gnostics ;  thought  there  continuing  to  follow  the 
lead  given  to  it  by  the  older  Greek  dialectics.  Ae'rius, 
who  raised  in  Asia  Minor  in  the  fourth  century  an 
agitation  against  episcopacy,  fasts,  prayers  for  the  dead, 
and  the  ceremony  of  slaying  a  lamb  at  Easter,  is  an 
exception  among  eastern  heretics  ;  and  the  dogmatic- 
dialectic  tendency  persisted.  In  the  fifth  century, 
Theodorus  of  Mopsuestia,  a  voluminous  writer,  taught 
rationally  that  most  of  the  Old  Testament  prophecies 
applied  by  orthodoxy  to  Jesus  had  reference  to  events 
in  pre-Christian  history.  Needless  to  say,  this  was 
heresy.  But  the  chief  new  schisms  of  the  period 
were  those  of  Nestorius  and  the  Monophysites. 
Nestorius,  Bishop  of  Constantinople,  a  pupil  of 
Theodorus,  but  a  zealous  persecutor  of  heresy, 
became  embroiled  in  the  second  stage  of  the  endless 
wrangle  as  to  the  nature  of  Christ.  In  the  latter  half 
of  the  fourth  century,  Apollinaris,  Bishop  of  Laodicea, 
a  strong  anti-Arian,  holding  that  the  dogma  of  a 
God-man  was  monstrous,  had  taught  that  Jesus 
was  without  a  human  soul  (or  mind,  as  distinguished 
from  mere  animal  life),  having  only  a  divine  one. 


184  FIFTH  CENTUKY. 

This  was  to  "  confound  the  two  natures  " ;  Apollinaris 
was  condemned ;  and  the  Syrian  orthodox  rectified 
matters  by  insisting  that  there  were  two,  while  the 
Egyptians,  recoiling  from  the  risk  of  a  theory  of  two 
Christs,  insisted  that  the  two  were  nevertheless  one. 
Nestorius  stood  with  his  fellow- Syrians,  and  sought  to 
crush  the  Apollinarians  as  he  had  helped  to  hound 
down  Arians,  Novatians,  and  other  misbelievers.  The 
Apollinarians,  however,  had  a  stronghold  in  their 
deification  of  Mary,  whom  they  called  Theotokos  or 
Deipara,  "the  mother  (bearer)  of  God";  and  when 
the  Nestorians  denounced  the  common  use  of  this 
term  they  incurred  the  wrath  of  the  multitude,  who, 
wont  in  the  past  to  worship  Goddess-mothers  with  a 
special  devotion,  and  wroth  at  the  attempt  to  put  Mary 
lower  than  Isis  and  Cybele,  naturally  sought  to 
exalt  Mary  as  they  had  exalted  Jesus.  A  general 
Council  (431)  was  called  at  Ephesus  to  denounce 
Nestorius  ;  and  he,  the  heresy-hunter,  was  convicted 
of  blasphemy,  classed  with  Judas,  and  banished  for 
life.  Thenceforth,  orthodox  Christianity  was  for  all 
practical  purposes  a  worship  of  a  Goddess  and  two 
supreme  Gods;  and  Nestorian  Christianity,  flourishing 
in  Asia,  became  a  hostile  religion.  Thus  in  the  East  as 
in  the  West  the  State  was  riven  in  new  religious  factions 
at  the  very  hour  when  it  needed  above  all  things 
unity.  Persia  was  at  that  very  time  beginning  the 
acquisition  of  half  of  Armenia,  as  the  Vandals  were 
beginning  the  conquest  of  North  Africa.  To  Persia 
the  Nestorians  were  driven  ;  and  there,  declaring  them- 
selves the  friends  of  the  enemies  of  the  Byzantine 
empire,  they  were  fostered,  while  the  orthodox 
Christians  were  persecuted,  massacred,  and  expelled. 
To  a  thoughtful  pagan,  viewing  the  course  of  things, 


THE  COST  OF  ORTHODOXY.  185 

it  must  have  seemed  as  if  the  Gods  had  given  over 
the  Christians  to  madness.  Among  the  chief  enemies 
of  Nestorius  was  Eutyches,  an  abbot  of  a  Constanti- 
nople monastery.  In  the  year  448,  by  way  of  making 
an  end  of  Nestorianism,  he  explicitly  taught  that 
Christ  had  only  one  nature,  the  divine.  Instantly 
this  was  in  turn  denounced  as  a  return  to  the  Apolli- 
narian  heresy,  and  Eutyches  was  cast  out  of  the 
church  by  a  hostile  council.  Another  council,  skilfully 
packed,  acquitted  him,  and  caused  his  accuser  to  be 
flogged  and  banished ;  but  a  third,  that  of  Chalcedon 
(451),  again  condemned  him.  Thus  was  the  Christian 
dogma  fixed  in  the  form  of  maximum  arbitrariness 
and  unintelligibility.  The  council  of  Nicaea  (321)  had 
determined  against  Arius  that  Christ  was  truly  God, 
coequal  and  coeternal  with  his  Father,  separate  and 
yet  one ;  the  Council  of  Constantinople  (381)  had 
determined  against  Apollinaris  that  he  was  also  truly 
man ;  that  of  Ephesus  (431)  had  established  that  the 
two  natures  were  indivisibly  one ;  and  that  of 
Chalcedon  (451)  that  they  were  nevertheless  perfectly 
distinct.  All  four  dogmas  became  fixed  constituents  of 
the  Christian  creed.  To  this  length  had  men  evolved 
a  myth.  And  there  were  still  developments  to  come. 
The  condemned  Eutycheans,  modifying  their  posi- 
tion, but  still  calling  themselves  Monophysites,  became 
in  turn  a  force  of  fatal  cleavage.  The  emperor  Zeno, 
in  the  year  482,  conciliated  them  by  an  edict  called 
his  Henoticon  ("  unifying  ") ;  but  the  orthodox  only 
opposed  them  the  more  ;  though  all  the  while  the 
Monophysites  professed  to  regard  the  "  one  nature  " 
as  a  union  of  two,  "  yet  without  any  conversion,  con- 
fusion, or  commixture."  On  this  absolutely  unintel- 
ligible difference  the  sects  finally  sundered  their  very 


186  SEVENTH  CENTURY. 

nationality.  Late  in  the  sixth  century,  under  a  new 
leader,  Jacobus  Baradaeus,  they  became  known  as 
Jacobites  ;  and  when  in  the  next  century  the  rising 
movement  of  the  Mohammedan  Arabs  broke  upon 
Egypt,  where  they  abounded,  the  hatred  of  Jacobites 
for  Catholics  was  such  as  to  make  them  welcome  the 
anti-christian  enemy,  as  they  and  others  had  previously 
welcomed  the  Persians  in  Syria.  It  is  not  to  be  sup- 
posed, indeed,  that  Christianity  was  the  efficient  cause  of 
such  a  miserable  evolution.  The  very  insanity  of  the 
strifes  of  Christians  over  meaningless  dogmas  is 
primarily  to  be  traced  to  the  fatal  constriction  of  life 
and  energy  represented  by  the  imperial  system.  It 
was  because  men  had  no  rational  interests  to  strive 
over  if  they  would,  that  they  strove  insanely  over 
abracadabras  of  creed,  and  made  war  flags  of  the  two 
colours  of  the  charioteers  of  the  circus  ;  even  as  in 
Egypt  the  abject  populations  of  the  old  cities,  down 
to  the  time  of  Julian,  fought  to  the  death  for  their 
respective  animal-Gods.  But  it  is  essential  to  note 
the  absolute  failure  of  Christianity  to  give  to  the 
decaying  civilisation  any  light  for  its  path.  It 
flourished  by  reason  of  decadence,  and  ii>  could  not 
arrest  it.  What  ultimately  preserved  any  section  of 
the  Christian  empire  was  the  pagan  heritage  of  law 
and  system,  applied  to  a  State  shorn  of  all  its  out- 
lying and  alien  provinces,  and  reduced  to  the  homo- 
geneity and  the  status  of  a  kingdom  proper  with  a 
commercial  and  industrial  life.  Justinian  was  fain  to 
set  a  non-Christian  lawyer — pagan  or  atheist — to 
frame  the  code  of  laws  by  which  Byzantium  went  on 
living ;  himself  we  find  fulminating  against  revived 
heresies,  anathematising  the  long-dead  Origen,  and 
latterly  enouncing  heresies  of  his  own  which,  had  he 


THE  COST  OF  ORTHODOXY.  187 

lived  longer,  would  have  wrought  fresh  convulsions  in 
the  State. 

Such  is  the  note  of  Greek-Christian  life  down  to 
the  very  hour  of  the  supreme  catastrophe  which  tore 
from  the  warlike  Heraclius  himself  the  provinces  of 
Syria  and  Egypt  (632-639),  and,  engulfing  next  North 
Africa,  overthrew  Christianity  forever  in  the  lands  in 
which  it  had  been  built  up.  Heraclius,  struggling  to 
save  a  shaken  empire,  had  early  realised,  as  did 
Maurice  before  him,  the  madness  of  driving  myriads 
of  Nestorians  into  the  arms  of  Persia ;  and  after  his 
triumph  over  Chosroes  he  sought  to  conciliate  both 
Nestorians  and  Monophysites  by  a  decree  (630)  to  the 
effect  that,  while  there  were  in  Christ  two  natures, 
there  was  only  one  will,  as  was  admitted  by  the 
Nestorians.  For  a  time  all  seemed  well,  and  many 
Monophysites  in  the  outlying  provinces  returned  to 
the  Church.  But  in  a  few  years  an  orthodox  zealot, 
Sophronius,  patriarch  of  Jerusalem,  reopened  the 
eternal  debate,  and  declared  that  the  new  formula  was 
a  revival  of  the  Eutychean  heresy.  In  vain  Heraclius, 
striving  to  save  the  remnants  of  the  empire,  sought 
to  enforce  his  solution  (639)  by  an  ecthesis,  or  formula, 
which  forbade  further  debate  on  the  subject.  The 
Catholics  decided  that  there  were  two  wills,  though 
they  always  coincided  ;  and  the  doctrine  of  one  will — 
the  "  Monothelite  "  heresy — at  length  became  a  ground 
for  the  repudiation  of  the  rule  of  Constans  II.  over 
Italy,  a  hundred  bishops  anathematising  the  typus  or 
formula  in  which  he  endorsed  the  ecthesis  of  his 
grandfather.  Finally,  Constantine  II.  (681)  accepted 
the  doctrine  that  in  Christ  two  wills  were  harmonised, 
and  one  more  orthodox  countersense  was  added  to  the 
definition  of  the  God-Man  who  never  was.  The 


188  FOUETH  CENTURY. 

so-called  Athanasian  creed — really  a  product  of  the 
Latin  Church  some  centuries  later  than  Athanasius — 
is  a  parade  of  the  whole  series.  To  this  much  had 
Christianity  attained  after  four  hundred  years  of 
indescribable  strife.  The  one  clue  through  the  chaos 
is  the  perception  that  in  every  stage  the  dispute 
logically  went  back  to  the  original  issue  of  monotheism 
and  polytheism.  The  church,  holding  by  the  Hebrew 
sacred  books,  was  committed  doctrinally  to  the  former, 
but  practically  to  the  latter.  Every  affirmation  of 
"  one  "  tended  to  imperil  the  separate  divinity  of  the 
sacrificed  Jesus;  and  every  affirmation  of  duality 
gave  an  opening  to  the  polytheists.  The  one  durable 
solution  was,  at  each  crisis,  to  make  both  affirma- 
tions, and  so  baffle  at  once  reason  and  schismatic 
fanaticism. 

In  effect,  Christianity  had  become  polytheistic  ;  and 
were  it  not  that  the  personalities  of  Father  Mother 
and  Son  satisfied  the  average  religious  need,  as  it  had 
so  long  done  in  pre-Christian  Egypt,  the  dispute 
actually  begun  by  Bishop  Macedonius  of  Constanti- 
nople in  the  fourth  century  over  the  modality  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  would  have  gone  as  far  as  those  over  the 
Son  and  "  the  Mother  of  God."  In  its  first  stage, 
the  conception  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  so  vague  and  pur- 
poseless in  the  orthodox  doctrine,  would  seem  to  have 
been  distinctly  that  of  a  feminine  Deity.  We  know 
from  Origen  that  in  the  lost  gospel  of  the  Hebrews 
Jesus  was  made  to  speak  of  "  My  Mother  the  Holy 
Spirit."  This  was  a  heretical  reversion,  on  Judseo- 
Gnostic  lines,  to  the  original  Semitic  theosophy, 
according  to  which  every  God  had  his  female  counter- 
part; but  ordinary  Jewish  monotheism,  which  had 
put  aside  the  female  Spirit  (Ruach)  of  its  older  lore, 


THE  COST  OF  OETHODOXY.  189 

was  sufficiently  strong  to  prevent  the  acceptance  of 
such  a  heresy  in  the  gospel-making  period  ;  and  the 
accepted  gospel  birth-myth  was  better  adapted  to  the 
general  purposes  of  the  cult.  For  the  paganised 
Church,  finally,  the  divinisation  of  Mary  was  a  simple 
matter,  as  we  have  seen ;  and  the  Holy  Spirit,  which 
had  obscurely  entered  the  orthodox  myth  in  a  form 
really  Samaritan,  but  permitted  by  Judaic  doctrine, 
thenceforth  remained  a  gratuitous  enigma,  capping 
the  mystery  of  the  co-eternal  Father  and  Begotten 
Son.  The  Eastern  Church,  recoiling  from  a  reitera- 
tion of  the  latter  counter  sense,  decided  (381)  that  the 
Spirit  "  proceeded  from  "  the  Father,  but  not  from  the 
Son,  thus  virtually  depriving  the  Son,  after  all,  of  his 
so-often  affirmed  equality.  The  root  of  the  difficulty, 
as  of  the  Trinitarian  dogma  in  general,  is  to  be  seen 
in  the  old  Egyptian  pantheism,  according  to  which 
the  all-comprehending  Amun  "is  at  once  the  Father, 
the  Mother,  and  the  Son  of  God";  but  even  as 
the  Amunite  priests  made  play  with  the  Son- God 
Khonsu  after  affirming  the  oneness  of  Amun,  so 
the  Christian  priesthood  was  forced  at  every  step 
to  distinguish  the  Son  while  affirming  the  oneness 
of  the  Trinity;  and  each  new  dogma  was  a  fresh 
ground  for  the  old  quarrel.  In  the  end  the  Western 
Church  rejected  this  Eastern  heresy  as  it  did  the 
Monothelite,  and  the  Council  of  Toledo  (589)  added 
to  the  creed  the  Filioque  clause,  thus  stating  that  the 
Spirit  proceeded  from  the  Father  "  and  from  the 
Son."  But  at  this  point  the  Eastern  Church  remained 
obstinate ;  it  admitted  that  the  Spirit  came  through 
the  Son,  but  would  not  say  it  "  proceeded  from  "  the 
Son  ;  and  the  Filioque  clause  remained  a  standing 
ground  of  feud  between  East  and  West,  as  well  as  a 


190  SEVENTH  CENTURY. 

standing  instance  of  the  irrationality  of  the  orthodox 
system.  It  is  no  wonder  that  in  the  seventh  century 
eastern  churchmen  were  still  writing  treatises  against 
paganism,  which,  despite  all  the  penal  laws,  persisted 
in  virtue  of  its  incoherent  simplicity  as  against  the 
coherent  unintelligibility  of  the  Christian  creed. 

A  politic  Christian,  indeed,  might  point  to  the  mere 
history  of  heresy  as  showing  the  need  for  a  dogma 
which  should  give  no  foothold  to  reason.  Like  the 
Arians,  the  Monophysites  had  divided  into  warring 
sects,  their  crux  being  that  of  the  corruptibility  or  incor- 
ruptibility of  the  body  of  Christ ;  and  the  two  parties 
thus  formed  split  in  turn  into  five.  The  total  schism 
was  in  the  main  racial,  Egyptian  opposing  Greek  ; 
and  the  carnal  jealousies  of  the  patriarchs  and  bishops 
seem  to  have  played  a  great  part  in  creating  it ; 
but  nothing  could  arrest  the  process  of  sub-division 
and  strife.  In  one  furious  feud  over  the  election  of  a 
bishop  of  the  Monophysite  church  of  Alexandria,  a 
hundred  and  seventy  years  after  the  first  Eutychean 
schism,  the  fighting  reached  the  lowest  stage  of 
savagery ;  and  Justinian's  general  Narses,  who 
supported  the  "incorruptible"  candidate  at  the  behest 
of  the  empress  Theodora,  had  to  burn  a  large  part  of  the 
city  before  he  could  carry  his  point.  Soon  afterwards, 
another  imperial  nominee,  who  entered  the  city  in 
battle  array,  had  to  fight  for  his  place ;  and  the 
carnage  was  enormous.  In  every  doctrinal  strife  in 
turn,  the  parties  proceeded  to  bloodshed  with  a  speed 
and  zest  which  turned  to  derision  the  moral  formulas 
of  their  creed.  Such  social  delirium  was  chronic  in 
Christendom  from  the  age  of  Constantine  to  the 
triumph  of  the  Saracens ;  and,  needless  to  say,  under 
such  conditions  there  was  no  progress  in  civilization. 


MOKAL  AND  INTELLECTUAL  STAGNATION.          191 

§  3.  Moral  and  Intellectual  Stagnation. 

On  the  intellectual  side,  ancient  Christianity  is  on 
the  whole  at  its  strongest  in  the  west,  just  before  the 
fall  of  the  western  empire,  as  if  the  last  mental 
energies  of  the  Roman  world  had  there  found  a 
channel.  Augustine  passed  on  to  the  middle  ages  a 
body  of  polemic  theology  sufficiently  vivacious  to 
constitute  a  Christian  classic ;  and  in  him  at  last 
the  Latin  church  had  produced  a  personality  compar- 
able to  Origen.  Jerome,  on  the  other  hand,  could 
compare  with  Origen  as  a  scholar,  and  like  him  he 
laid  bases  for  the  scholarship  of  a  later  and  reviving 
age.  But  the  total  achievement  of  Christianity  on 
behalf  of  ancient  civilisation  had  amounted  to 
nothing.  By  spreading  the  dogma  that  error  of 
belief,  whether  as  paganism  or  as  heresy,  doomed 
men  to  eternal  torment,  it  negated  the  very  basis  of 
human  brotherhood,  and  gave  a  new  dominion  to 
hate,  individual  and  corporate.  It  made  neither  good 
rulers  nor  a  sound  society.  Valentinian  must  have 
been  made  tolerant  in  state  affairs  by  the  spirit  of 
pagan  policy  :  as  a  man  he  was  so  abnormally  cruel 
that  had  he  been  a  pagan  the  historians  would  have 
compared  him  to  Nero.  That  a  year  after  Julian's 
death  there  should  be  on  the  throne  a  Christian 
emperor  who  caused  offenders  to  be  thrown  to  wild 
bears  in  his  own  presence,  is  a  memorable  item  in 
Christian  history.  Of  his  Arian  brother  Valens  it  is 
told  that  he  caused  to  be  burned  at  sea  a  shipload  of 
eighty  ecclesiastics  who  had  come  to  him  as  a  deputa- 
tion. This  may  be  an  orthodox  fiction ;  but  such 
fictions  are  themselves  signal  proofs  of  demoralising 


192  FIFTH  CENTUKY. 

malignity;  as  is  the  orthodox  suppression  of  the  story 
of  how  the  Arian  bishop  Deogratius  at  Carthage 
succoured  the  captives  brought  by  the  Vandals  from 
the  sack  of  Rome — one  of  the  rare  records  of 
magnanimous  humanity  in  the  history  of  the  age. 
From  the  orthodox  themselves  we  know  how  Pope 
Leo  had  banished  and  imprisoned  the  Manichaeans  and 
Pelagians  who  sought  refuge  at  Rome  when  the 
Vandals  attacked  Carthage.  The  emperors  exhibit 
the  process  of  decivilisation.  Valentinian  died  of 
rage:  his  pious  sons  were  weaklings;  and  Theodosius, 
when  the  rabble  of  Thessalonica  braved  him  by 
murdering  his  governor  for  enforcing  the  law  against 
a  popular  charioteer,  treacherously  planned  a  syste- 
matic and  indiscriminate  massacre  by  which  there 
perished  from  seven  to  fifteen  thousand  men,  women, 
and  children.  No  pagan  emperor  had  ever  done  the 
like  ;  and  no  such  number  of  Christians  can  have 
been  put  to  death  by  Nero.  Heraclius,  after  behead- 
ing Phocas,  sent  his  head  and  limbs  to  be  dragged 
through  the  streets  of  Constantinople — a  reversion  to 
barbarism.  Two  centuries  earlier  (415)  a  rabble  of 
Alexandrian  monks,  acting  in  the  interest  of  Cyril 
the  Patriarch,  seized  the  pagan  teacher  Hypatia, 
stripped  her,  tore  her  flesh  from  her  bones  with 
shells,  and  burned  the  remains.  It  is  one  of 
the  anomalies  of  historiography  that  a  moral  rebirth 
of  the  world  should  have  been  held  to  begin  in 
an  age  in  which  such  things  could  be.  Rather 
the  Mediterranean  world  had  grown  more  neuroti- 
cally evil  than  ever  before.  The  facts  that  Bishop 
Ambrose  of  Milan  denounced  the  emperor's  act, 
forcing  him  to  do  penance  for  seven  months  before 
readmitting  him  to  worship,  and  that  Theodosius 


MORAL  AND  INTELLECTUAL  STAGNATION.          198 

in  his  remorse  submitted  to  the  sentence  and  was 
afterwards  less  vindictive,  are  the  best  that  can  be 
recorded  per  contra.  Ambrose  himself  warmly  justified 
the  burning  of  Jewish  synagogues ;  and  while  he, 
with  all  his  ecclesiastical  frauds,  showed  a  public  spirit, 
it  is  a  commonplace  of  Christian  history  that  from 
the  third  century  onwards  bishops  in  general  were 
self-seekers,  who  battled  furiously  over  questions  of 
diocesan  boundaries,  and  were  the  ideal  contrast  to  the 
legendary  apostles.  Among  the  Christianised  bar- 
barians who  in  their  turn  overran  the  empire,  the 
moral  phenomena  become  even  worse,  their  religion 
seeming  only  to  make  them  more  savage  and  vicious. 

All  that  Christianity  had  yielded  under  the  form  of 
moral  betterment  was  an  increasing  glorification  of 
chastity  and  celibacy,  with  some  restraint  on  infan- 
ticide. When  the  western  empire  is  on  the  verge  of 
destruction,  Rome  being  already  sacked,  we  find 
Jerome  expanding  in  an  insane  exultation  over  the 
news  that  a  young  Roman  lady  had  taken  the  vow  of 
virginity,  an  event  to  which  he  ascribes  cosmic  impor- 
tance. The  mother  of  such  a  virgin,  he  declares, 
becomes  ipso  facto  "  the  mother-in-law  of  God." 
As  always  happens  where  sexual  virtue  is  identified 
with  abstinence,  vice  was  excessive.  Chrysostom 
in  the  East,  and  Salvian  in  Gaul,  testify  that 
alike  in  licence  and  in  cruelty  the  Christianised 
State  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century  was  the 
worsened  copy  of  the  pagan  world  of  four  centuries 
before.  The  Greek  Basil  and  the  Italian  Ambrose 
alike  bear  witness  to  the  survival  in  the  Christian 
church  of  all  the  excesses  of  the  old  Baccha- 
nalia. Even  the  tradition  that  in  the  reign  of 
Honorius  (404)  the  horrible  gladiatorial  games  were 

o 


194  FIFTH  CENTUKY. 

abolished,  is  admitted  by  Christian  scholarship  to  be 
false.     It  may  be  that  a  humane  monk  did  lose  his 
life  in  trying  to  stop  them  ;  but  there  is  clear  proof 
that  the  games  subsisted  in  Christian  Gaul  at  a  later 
date,   though   even   humane   pagans   had   called   for 
their  abolition,  and  their  cost  was  a  heavy   burden 
on  the  falling  revenue.     Centuries  before    the  time 
of  Honorius,  Apollonius  of  Tyana  was  credited  with 
causing    them    to    be    abolished    at    Athens.      Not 
till   the    Gothic    conquest    did    they    cease    in    the 
west;     nor    did    the    piety    of    Honorius    and    his 
advisers  withhold  them  from  treacherous  massacres, 
and  from  enacting  the  punishment  of  burning  alive 
for  frauds  on  the  fisc.     And  the  wrong  of  wrongs  was 
left  not  only  untouched  but  unchallenged.     Slavery 
remained,  and  the  average  lot  of  the  slave  was  no 
better  than  in  the  Rome  of  Horace,  Christian  matrons 
in  the  east  being  as  cruel  mistresses  as  those  of  the 
west    in    the    days    before    Nero.     That     Christian 
credences  counted   for  little  in  setting  up  even  the 
species   of  virtue   most   esteemed,  may   be  gathered 
from   the   Confessions   of    Augustine.     By    his   own 
account,  what  first  drew  him   in  his  youth  to  moral 
reflection  and  conduct  was  not  the  pious  teaching  of 
his  mother  but  the  writing  of  Cicero ;  he  was  scru- 
pulous as  a  Manichaean  before  he  became  orthodox  ; 
and  his  charges  of  hypocrisy  against  some  Manichseans 
merely  place  the  heretical  sect  on  a  level  with  the 
orthodox.     As    regarded    the    weightier    matters    of 
morals  there  could  be  no  vital  reform,  because  there 
was  at  work  neither  an  intellectual  force  nor  a  self- 
saving  pressure  from  the  wronged  orders  of  society. 
The  ethic  which  led  Origen  to  make  himself  a  eunuch 
was  not  a  force  for  betterment. 


MORAL  AND  INTELLECTUAL  STAGNATION.  195 

A  survey  of  the  literature  of  the  fourth  and  fifth 
centuries  will  make  equally  clear  the  failure  of 
Christianity  to  renew  the  mental  life  which  had  been 
dwindling  in  the  Hellenic  world  since  the  days  of 
Alexander,  and  in  the  western  since  those  of  Augustus. 
No  modern  seeker  for  wisdom  or  beauty  in  ancient 
lore  thinks  of  turning  for  it  to  the  Greek  and  Latin 
writings  of  the  age  of  established  Christianity. 
Augustine,  whose  energy  was  sufficient  for  a  great 
literary  performance,  leaves  a  mass  of  work  out  of 
which  two  or  three  treatises  only  have  any  truly 
literary  as  distinct  from  an  archaeological  interest ; 
and  these  are  vitiated  as  compared  with  good  pagan 
work  by  their  wearisome  hysterical  pietism  no  less 
than  by  their  utter  lack  of  serenity.  The  Con- 
fessions, which  might  have  been  a  great  human 
document,  are  reduced  by  their  religious  content 
almost  to  the  plane  of  the  surrounding  wilderness  of 
rhetorical  theology,  whereof  a  library  still  subsists, 
unreadable  and  unread.  Rhetoric,  the  bane  of  the 
decadent  pagan  literature,  infects  equally  all  the 
Christian  writers,  giving  to  the  most  vehement  the  ring 
of  inflation  and  false  passion.  Literature  of  artistic 
or  intellectual  value  was  almost  at  an  end.  Such 
Christian  poets  as  Prudentius  and  Paulinus  have 
indeed  merit  in  their  kind ;  but  they  could  not  begin 
a  literary  renascence  under  the  conditions  set  up 
either  by  fanatical  Christianity  or  by  the  worldly  spirit 
which  divided  with  fanaticism  the  control  of  the 
Christian  Church  and  State  in  the  west  as  in  the 
east.  And  when  the  spirit  of  literature  did  later 
revive,  it  turned  with  less  zest  to  the  pietists  named 
than  to  their  pagan  contemporary  Claudian,  who  if  not  a 
great  poet  is  yet  high  among  the  lesser  classics  of  Rome. 


196  FIFTH  CENTURY. 

It  would  seem  as  if  Claudian,  coming  to  the  writing  of 
Latin  after  a  Greek  education,  was  partly  saved  by 
that  circumstance  from  the  artistic  fatuity  which  had 
become  normal  among  the  westerns  as  among  the 
easterns ;  the  need  to  think  in  a  new  speech  vitalising 
/his  use  of  it.  But  he  remained  wholly  pagan  in  his 
creed.  And  such  pagan  thinkers  as  Macrobius  and 
Simplicius,  though  unoriginal  in  comparison  with 
those  whom  they  commented,  reward  attention  in 
many  ways  better  than  their  contemporaries  of  the 
Church.  What  of  permanent  appeal  there  is  in  the 
teaching  of  Augustine  comes  largely  from  his  early 
philosophic  culture ;  and  Ambrose  has  hardly  anything 
in  the  way  of  serious  or  philosophic  thought  which  he 
does  not  borrow  from  pagan  lore.  Bcethius,  the  last 
of  the  ancient  philosophers,  was  a  Christian  only  in 
name,  expounding  its  orthodox  dogma  as  a  lawyer 
might  expound  law :  when  he  came  to  write  his 
consolations  in  prison  he  went  back  to  the  ancient 
and  universal  ethic,  putting  aside  his  creed  as  he 
might  a  mask.  The  vogue  of  his  book  in  the  Dark 
Ages  is  the  expression  of  thinking  men's  satisfaction 
in  a  late  Latin  treatise  which  brooded  gravely  on  life 
and  death  in  terms  of  human  feeling  and  wisdom, 
with  no  hint  of  the  formulas  of  the  priest. 

On  the  side  of  science  in  particular  and  education 
in  general  the  Christian  tendency  was  increasingly 
repressive.  When  Christianity  was  established  there 
were  still  grammar  schools  in  every  considerable 
town  in  the  empire,  and  many  higher  schools  in  the 
great  cities ;  and  though  for  long  the  Christians  were 
fain  to  use  these  schools,  pagan  as  they  were  in 
character,  by  reason  of  their  almost  purely  literary 
or  rhetorical  curriculum,  the  Church  gradually  let 


MORAL  AND  INTELLECTUAL  STAGNATION.  197 

them  die  out,  never  even  attempting  a  Christian 
system  of  education,  apart  from  a  few  theological 
schools.  Nor  did  the  process  of  extinction  of  know- 
ledge end  there.  Early  in  the  fifth  century,  Theo- 
dosius  II.  forbade  all  public  lecturing  by  non-official  , 
teachers;  and  a  century  later  Justinian  plundered 
and  abolished  the  philosophical  schools  at  Athens, 
thus  ending  the  last  vestige  of  the  higher  intellectual 
life.  Pope  Gregory  the  Great  fanatically  discouraged 
literary  culture ;  and  in  the  east  it  soon  became  a 
matter  of  orthodox  rule  that  the  laity  should  not  read 
the  sacred  books,  the  only  literature  that  could  well 
come  in  their  way.  Science  so-called  was  practically 
a  synonym  for  heresy  :  it  was  denounced  as  impious 
by  zealous  believers  in  the  third  century  ;  and  in  the 
sixth  we  find  Cosmas  "  Indicopleustes,"  the  Indian 
voyager,  a  Nestorian  Christian,  denouncing  the  pagan 
doctrine  of  the  roundness  of  the  earth,  which  he 
religiously  demonstrates  to  be  an  oblong  plane. 
Medicine  had  gone  far  under  pagan  auspices,  and 
Antoninus  Pius  had  provided  for  municipal  physicians 
throughout  the  empire  ;  but  the  Christians,  seeing 
heresy  in  all  science,  put  prayer  and  exorcism  above 
leechcraft;  the  temple- schools  of  the  healing  God 
Aesculapius  were  closed  with  the  rest,  and  medical  like 
other  science  virtually  died  out  of  Christian  hands,  to 
be  recovered  from  old  Greek  lore  by  the  Saracens. 
Gregory  the  Great  exhibits  the  superstition  of  an 
ignorant  Asiatic.  What  the  world  needed  above  all 
things  was  new  study  and  real  knowledge  in  place 
of  rhetoric :  the  fatality  of  the  Christian  system  was 
that  it  set  up  the  conviction  that  all  vital  knowledge 
was  contained  in  itself.  Yet  all  the  while  the  religious 
habit  of  mind,  which  saw  in  pious  fraud  a  service  to 


198  SEVENTH  CENTURY. 

deity,  had  almost  destroyed  the  rational  conception  of 
truth,  so  that  a  thousand  years  were  to  elapse  before 
human  testimony  could  return  to  the  standards  of 
Thucydides,  or  human  judgment  rise  above  a  gross 
credulity.  Were  it  only  in  the  west,  overrun  by 
barbarism,  that  the  lights  of  knowledge  and  art  went 
out,  the  barbarian  invasion  might  be  put  as  the  cause ; 
but  the  history  of  Christian  Byzantium  is  the  history 
of  an  intellectual  arrest  of  a  thousand  years  on  the 
very  soil  of  civilization. 


§  4.  The  Social  Failure. 

Of  the  eastern  Christian  empire  as  it  is  left  curtailed 
of  more  than  half  its  area  by  the  Moslem  conquest,  the 
one  thing  that  cannot  be  predicated  is  progress  or  trans- 
formation. Here  again  it  would  be  an  error  to  regard 
Christianity  as  the  cause  of  stagnation  :  the  whole 
political  science  of  antiquity  had  been  markedly 
conservative ;  but  it  must  be  noted  that  historic 
Christianity  absolutely  endorsed  the  ideal  of  fixity. 
Only  conditions  of  stimulating  culture-contract  could 
have  preserved  a  vigorous  mental  life  under  its  sway ; 
and  the  condition  of  Byzantium  was  unhappily  one  of 
almost  complete  racial  and  religious  isolation.  The 
Byzantium  of  Justinian  and  Heraclius  is  almost  the 
ideal  of  ossification  ;  its  very  disorders  are  normal, 
the  habitual  outbreaks  of  a  vicious  organism.  There 
is  nothing  in  pagan  history  to  compare  with  the 
chronic  pandemonium  set  up  in  Christian  Constanti- 
nople by  the  circus  factions  of  blues  and  greens, 
whose  mutual  massacres  in  generation  after  generation 
outdid  the  slaughters  of  many  civil  wars.  As  painted 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE.  199 

by  its  own  Christian  censors,  the  Byzantine  town 
population  of  all  orders  was  at  least  as  worthless  as 
that  of  pagan  Rome  in  its  worst  imperial  days ;  it 
realised  the  ignorance  and  unprogressiveness  of 
modern  China  without  the  Chinese  compensations  of 
normal  good  nature,  courtesy,  domestic  unity,  and 
patient  toil.  Industry  indeed  there  must  have  been  ; 
it  was  perhaps  the  silk  industry  introduced  by  Justinian 
that  began  the  economic  salvation  of  the  State ;  but 
the  law  prescribed  a  system  of  industrial  caste, 
binding  every  man,  as  far  as  might  be,  to  his  father's 
trade,  which  must  have  kept  the  working  populace 
very  much  on  the  level  of  that  of  ancient  Egypt. 
Nor  can  matters  have  been  socially  much  better  in  the 
west,  whether  in  Italy  under  Byzantine  or  Lombard 
rule,  or  in  the  new  barbarian  States,  Arian  and 
Catholic.  Everywhere  the  old  inequalities  of  law 
were  rather  worsened  than  cured,  and  no  Christian 
teacher  dreamed  of  curing  them.  The  ideals  of  the 
most  earnest  among  them,  as  Jerome  and  Paulinus, 
began  and  ended  in  mere  pietism  and  physical  self- 
mortincation. 

It  is  not  surprising,  then,  that  all  over  the  Christian 
world  the  most  salient  social  result  of  the  creed  was 
the  institution  of  monasticism,  a  Christian  adapta- 
tion of  a  usage  long  common  in  religious  and  down- 
trodden Egypt.  Everything  conduced  to  promote  it. 
The  spectacle  of  constant  strife  and  sensuality  in  the 
cities  moved  suffering  souls  of  the  unworldly  type  to 
withdraw  to  solitude  or  the  cloister ;  all  the  leading 
teachers  applauded  the  ideal,  while  denouncing  its 
abuses  ;  and  for  multitudes  of  unfortunate  or  inferior 
types,  avoiding  toil  or  escaping  tyranny,  then  as  later, 
the  life  of  the  monk  or  even  of  the  hermit,  though 


200  SEVENTH  CENTURY. 

poor,  was  one  of  relative  ease  and  idleness,  greatly 
preferable  to  that  of  the  proletary,  since  all  could 
count  on  being  at  least  maintained  by  popular  charity, 
if  not  enriched  by  the  believers  in  their  sanctity. 
To  these  types  were  added  that  of  the  ignorant 
fanatic,  which  seems  to  have  been  as  numerous  as 
that  of  the  slothful,  and  which  under  monastic 
conditions  seems  to  have  become  more  fanatical  than 
ever.  Thus  some  of  the  best  and  the  worst  moral 
elements,  the  latter  of  course  immensely  predo- 
minating, combined  to  weaken  the  social  fabric,  the 
former  by  withdrawing  their  finer  personalities  from 
a  world  that  doubly  needed  them  ;  the  latter  by  with- 
drawing hands  from  labour  and  widening  the  realm  of 
ignorant  faith.  Some  powerful  personalities,  as  Basil 
and  Chrysostom  and  Gregory,  were  bred  in  the 
monastic  life ;  but  in  the  main  it  was  a  mere  impo- 
verishment of  civilization.  In  the  critical  period  of 
Christian  history  the  monks  are  often  found  zealous 
in  works  of  rabid  violence,  such  as  the  destruction  of 
pagan  temples  and  Jewish  synagogues,  and  the 
horrible  murder  of  the  pagan  girl-philosopher  Hypatia, 
in  Alexandria  (415) ;  and  they  too  had  their  furious 
dogmatic  strifes,  notably  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  cen- 
turies, when  those  of  Egypt  constituted  themselves 
the  champions  of  the  orthodoxy  (then  impeached)  of 
Origen,  for  no  clear  reason  save  perhaps  the  fact  of 
his  self -mutilation.  But,  as  Christian  historians 
have  remarked,  they  seem  to  have  done  nothing  to 
resist  the  ruinous  onslaught  of  Islam,  which  above  all 
things  despised  monks. 

There  is  reason  to  believe,  finally,  that  the  intellec- 
tual as  well  as  the  political  abjection  of  the  Christian 
mass  in  Syria,  Egypt,  and  North  Africa  made  many 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILUEE.  201 

of  them  ready  material  for  Islam,  even  as  sectarian 
hatreds  made  others  welcome  the  conqueror,  and 
resent  only  his  toleration  of  their  opponents.  Chris- 
tain  faith  availed  so  little  to  make  head  against  the 
new  faith  which  assailed  it,  that  we  must  infer  a 
partial  paralysis  on  the  Christian  side  as  a  result 
of  Moslem  success.  Success  was  the  theological 
proof  of  divine  aid  ;  and  many  calamities,  such  as 
earthquakes,  had  previously  seemed  to  tell  of  divine 
wrath  against  the  Christian  world.  Such  arguments 
shook  multitudes.  Numbers  apostatised  at  once ;  and 
when  the  Moslem  rule  was  established  from  Jerusalem 
to  Carthage,  the  Christian  Church,  tolerated  only 
to  be  humiliated,  dwindled  to  insignificance  on  its 
former  soil.  In  the  African  provinces  it  absolutely 
disappeared,  in  the  others  it  became  incapable  of 
moving  either  Arab  or  Frank  to  respect.  Nestorian 
Christianity,  already  settled  in  Persia,  was  specially 
tolerated  by  the  Saracens,  as  it  had  been  by  the 
Persians,  because  of  its  enmity  to  Christian  Byzantium ; 
but  though  it  continued  to  subsist  it  was  by  tolera- 
tion and  not  by  strength.  The  Nestorian  clergy  and 
laity  throve  somewhat  as  Jews  had  done  in  Borne ; 
but  they  made  no  headway  against  Islam,  and  some 
of  the  Asiatic  States  where  they  had  been  numerous 
fell  away  wholly  to  Mohammedanism.  Thus  was 
given  the  historic  proof  that  any  religion  may  be 
destroyed  or  degraded  by  brute  force,  provided  only 
the  brute  force  be  persistent,  and  efficiently  applied. 
What  pagan  Rome  did  not  do,  for  lack  of  syste- 
matic effort  or  continuous  purpose,  Islam  did  with  the 
greatest  ease,  the  purpose  and  the  effort  being  whole- 
hearted. And  when  we  compare  the  later  civilization 
of  the  Saracens  with  that  they  overthrew,  it  is  hard 


202  SEVENTH  CENTUKY. 

to  feel  that  the  world  lost  by  the  change.  If  mono- 
theism had  any  civilizing  virtue  as  against  polytheism, 
it  was  the  Moslems,  not  the  Christians,  who  were 
monotheists ;  and  the  Moslem  scorn  of  Christian 
man-worship  and  idolatry  reproduced  the  old  Chris- 
tian tone  towards  paganism.  On  the  side  of  morals, 
Moslem  polygamy  was  indeed  relatively  evil ;  but  on 
the  other  hand  the  giving  of  alms,  so  often  claimed  as 
a  specially  Christian  virtue,  was  under  Islam  an 
absolute  duty ;  Moslems  could  not  hold  Moslems  as 
slaves ;  Islam  knew  no  priestcraft ;  and  it  substan- 
tially excluded  the  common  Christian  evils  of  drunken- 
ness and  prostitution.  Almost  the  only  art  carried  on 
by  the  Byzantines  from  their  pagan  ancestors  was 
that  of  architecture,  their  churches  being  often 
beautiful ;  and  this  art,  as  well  as  that  of  working  in 
gold,  the  Saracens  preserved  ;  while  it  is  to  their  later 
adoption  of  the  ancient  Greek  science  that  the  world 
owes  the  revival  of  knowledge  after  the  night  of  the  Dark 
Ages.  Sculpture  and  painting  were  already  become 
contemptible  in  Christian  hands  ;  and  literature  was 
in  not  much  better  case.  It  is  to  be  noted,  too,  that  the 
traditional  blame  of  the  Goths  and  Vandals  for  the 
disfigurement  of  ancient  Rome  is  misplaced,  the  worst 
wreckers  being  the  generals  of  Justinian  and  the 
inhabitants  themselves,  always  ready  to  ruin  a  pagan 
memorial  for  the  sake  of  building  material. 

When  finally  we  seek  to  realise  the  aspect  of  the 
Hellenistic  world  in  the  time  of  Mohammed,  in  con- 
trast with  that  of  the  age  of  Pericles ;  or  the  Rome  of 
Pope  Gregory  the  Great  (590-604)  in  contrast  with  that 
of  Hadrian,  we  are  conscious  of  an  immense  loss  of 
human  faculty  for  beauty  and  joy,  no  less  than  for 
action.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  Christian  ideal 


THE  SOCIAL  FAILURE.  203 

of  sanctity  meant  not  only  self-mortification  and 
sadness  but  squalor  in  the  individual  life.  Physical 
uncleanliness  became  a  Christian  virtue ;  and  the 
mark  of  a  city  built  in  the  Christian  period  came 
to  be  the  absence  of  baths.  Pagan  Greece  lives 
for  ever  in  men's  thought  as  a  dream  of  grace  and 
beauty  and  enchanted  speech ;  and  though  behind 
the  shining  vision  of  art  and  song  there  lingers 
immovably  a  sombre  memory  of  strife  and  servitude, 
the  art  and  the  song  are  a  deathless  gift  to  mankind. 
At  every  summit  of  its  attainment,  our  civilization 
looks  back  to  them  with  an  unquenchable  envy,  an 
impotent  desire,  as  of  a  race  disinherited.  To  regain 
that  morning  glory  of  life  is  the  spontaneous  yearning 
of  all  who  have  gazed  on  the  distant  light  of  it.  But 
the  man  who  would  wish  to  recreate  the  Constanti- 
nople of  Justinian  or  Heraclius  has  not  yet  declared 
himself.  Dream  for  dream,  the  child-like  creed  of 
the  God-crowded  Hellas  of  Pheidias'  day,  peopled  with 
statues  and  crowned  with  temples  of  glorious  sym- 
metry, is  an  incomparably  fairer  thing  than  the 
tortured  dogma  of  the  Byzantine  church,  visually 
expressing  itself  in  wretched  icons,  barbaric  trappings, 
and  infinite  mummeries  of  ceremonial;  idolatry  for 
idolatry,  the  adoration  of  noble  statues  by  chanting 
bands  of  youths  and  maidens  can  have  wrought  less 
harm  to  head  and  heart  than  the  prostration  of  their 
posterity  before  the  abortions  of  Byzantine  art;  super- 
stition for  superstition,  there  is  nothing  in  old  Hellene 
religion,  with  all  its  survivals  of  savage  myth,  to  be 
compared  for  moral  and  mental  abjection  to  the  practice 
of  the  Christian  Greeks,  with  their  pilgrimages  to 
Arabia  to  kiss  Job's  dunghill,  and  their  grovelling 
worship  of  dead  men's  bones.  Some  Christian 


204  SEVENTH  CENTURY. 

historians,  seeking  a  vital  test,  have  concluded  that 
under  paganism  there  was  no  good  "life  of  the  heart"; 
but  whatever  may  be  the  modern  superiority  in  this 
regard,  there  is  nope  to  be  discerned  in  the  Christian 
civilizations  which  in  the  seventh  century  still  spoke 
the  classic  tongues  of  paganism. 

In  the  West,  where  a  spiritual  power  had  begun 
obscurely  to  acquire  a  Koman  empire  which  parodied 
the  old,  there  is  indeed  a  potential  superiority  pre- 
dicable  for  the  new.  Gregory  sending  Augustine  to 
convert  the  Britons  is  a  fairer  moral  spectacle  than 
that  of  Caesar,  bent  on  plunder,  seeking  to  conquer 
them.  But  whatever  might  be  the  moral  merit  of  a 
sincere  fanaticism  like  that  of  Gregory,  who  trampled 
down  culture  as  eagerly  as  he  pushed  propaganda, 
the  life  of  too  many  Popes  had  already  shown  that 
the  new  Komanism  was  only  to  be  Csesarism  with  a 
difference,  and  that  for  the  spiritual  as  for  the 
temporal  empire  the  great  end  was  gold.  Tyranny 
for  tyranny,  and  power  for  power,  the  Home  of  Trajan, 
superb  and  cruel,  is  hardly  a  worse  thing  than  the 
Rome  in  which  Popes  fought  with  hired  bands  for 
their  chair,  or  sat  in  it  through  the  favour  of  cour- 
tesans ;  and  the  Roman  populace  of  the  days  of 
Gregory  was  no  worthier  than  that  of  the  days  of 
Caracalla  or  of  Honorius.  "  Nothing  can  give  a  baser 
notion  of  their  degradation  than  their  actions,"  says 
Milman,  describing  the  conduct  of  the  Romans  at 
Gregory's  death,  when  they  had  become  thoroughly 
Christianised.  As  of  old,  the  accident  of  real  merit 
in  the  ruler  could  avail  for  much  in  administration ; 
but  still  the  calm  Antonines  can  bear  comparison  as 
potentates  and  men  with  any  wearer  of  the  triple 
crown. 


PART  III,— MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY, 


CHAPTER  I. 

EXPANSION    AND    ORGANISATION. 

§  1.  Position  in  the  Seventh  Century. 

WHEN  the  swift  triumph  of  Islam  had  cut  off  from 
Christendom  the  populations  among  whom  its  creed 
had  been  evolved,  that  creed  ruled  in  the  Byzantine 
State ;  in  Italy,  still  half-imperial,  half-Lombardic  ; 
in  Spain,  then  under  Teutonic  rulers  ;  in  Frankish 
Gaul ;  in  parts  of  southern  Germany ;  in  Saxon 
Britain,  of  which  the  conversion  was  begun  by  the 
lesser  Augustine  under  Gregory  the  Great,  after  the 
overthrow  of  the  earlier  church  by  the  heathen 
invaders ;  and  in  Ireland,  which  had  been  largely 
Christianised  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries, 
apparently  by  Greek  or  eastern  means.  In  the 
Moslem  world,  Christianity  existed  on  sufferance,  and 
chiefly  in  heretical  forms,  being  Nestorian  in  Persia 
and  Monophysite  in  Egypt,  as  also  in  Abyssinia ;  but 
Christian  Europe  was  now  nominally  agreed  on  the 
main  official  dogmas. 

In  the  more  civilised  European  States,  specific 
paganism  still  throve  more  or  less  obscurely,  both 
by  way  of  educated  antiquarianism  and  of  peasant 
persistence  in  old  ways;  and  the  Church  framed 

205 


206  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

canons  against  the  latter  and  treatises  against  the 
former.  The  mass  of  the  population,  however,  was 
satisfied  with  the  ample  elements  of  the  old  system 
embodied  in  the  new.  In  the  more  barbaric  States, 
Christianity  was  even  less  of  a  modifying  force  than 
in  the  others.  Like  the  people  of  the  empire,  the 
barbarians  carried  on  their  pagan  rites,  festivals,  and 
superstitions  under  the  name  of  Christianity ;  and 
whereas  the  educated  world  was  in  a  measure  forced 
by  its  pessimists  and  pietists  to  recognise  the  dif- 
ference between  its  documents  and  its  practice,  the 
more  primitive  races  simply  translated  Christian 
tradition  and  theory  into  the  terms  of  their  own  life. 
Save  for  an  exaltation  of  celibacy,  and  an  inquisition, 
at  once  prurient  and  puerile,  into  the  details  of  the 
sexual  relation,  it  in  no  way  changed  the  plane  of 
their  thought  and  conduct.  What  it  did  alter  was 
their  political  life,  inasmuch  as  the  co-ordination  of 
the  priesthood  made  everywhere  for  the  power  of  the 
prince,  if  he  had  the  wit  to  use  it,  the  church  being 
everywhere  shaped  as  far  as  might  be  on  the  model 
and  the  ideal  set  up  by  Constantine. 

Wherever  the  Koman  empire  had  been,  unless 
anti-Christian  violence  has  intervened,  the  church 
system  to  this  day  bears  witness  to  the  union  of 
Church  and  State.  In  France,  for  instance,  there 
is  still  a  bishop,  as  a  rule,  wherever  there  was  a 
Roman  municipality,  and  an  archbishop  wherever 
there  was  a  provincial  capital ;  and  where  in  imperial 
territory  there  were  variations  in  the  administration 
of  rural  districts — some  being  under  their  own  magis- 
trates, some  under  those  of  neighbouring  towns — the 
church  system  varied  similarly.  In  the  East,  rural 
bishops,  or  chorepiscopi,  were  common ;  but  in  the 


POSITION  IN  THE  SEVENTH  CENTUEY.  207 

West  they  seem  to  have  prevailed  only  in  the  Dark 
Ages,  the  general  tendency  being  to  give  the  rank  of 
mere  priests  to  the  holders  of  country  benefices,  and 
to  make  bishops  the  rulers  of  dioceses  from  a  civic 
seat  or  "cathedral"  church.  Country  parishes,  on 
the  other  hand,  were  formed  into  groups,  presided 
over  by  an  archipresbyter,  without  episcopal  rank.  The 
spirit  of  imperial  rule  pervaded  all  church  life.  Where 
large  landowners  under  the  Christian  emperors  had 
sought  to  resist  the  centralising  system  by  appointing 
the  priests  on  their  own  estates,  they  were  compelled 
to  obtain  the  approval  of  the  nearest  bishop  ;  and 
when  they  sought  next  to  do  without  priests,  a  law 
was  passed  forbidding  laymen  to  meet  for  worship 
without  an  ecclesiastic.  This  principle  was  carried 
wherever  the  Church  went,  and  rigid  subordination 
was  the  general  result.  To  secure  stability,  however, 
the  Church  had  to  rest  on  a  recognised  economic 
interest  throughout  the  priesthood;  and  the  early 
practice  of  a  communal  life  for  the  bishop  and  his 
clergy,  which  was  still  common  in  Gaul  and  Spain 
in  the  seventh  century,  was  gradually  broken  up. 
The  competition  of  monasticism  first  forced  upon 
all  a  stricter  rule  ;  and  priests  living  in  their  bishop's 
house  became  known  as  canonici  regular -es,  "  canons 
regular,"  or  under  rule — a  duplication  of  terms,  since 
"  canon  "  originally  meant  "  rule,"  and  "  canonical  " 
was  simply  "regular."  But  the  obvious  financial 
advantages,  as  well  as  the  liberties  of  the  unattached 
priests,  soon  made  their  status  the  aim  of  all  not 
devoted  to  the  monastic  ideals.  The  change  was 
furthered  by  the  habit  of  leaving  endowments  to 
individual  churches  and  to  individual  offices ;  till  at 
length  even  in  the  cathedral  towns  the  canons  lived 


208  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

apart,  each  with  his  own  revenue,  though  often  dining 
at  a  common  table  ;  while  the  country  priests  neces- 
sarily became  still  more  their  own  masters  in  the 
matter  of  income.  Thus  arose  the  "  secular  clergy," 
the  title  of  "  regular  "  being  restricted  to  those  who 
lived  under  a  monastic  rule — as  that  of  Benedict  or 
that  of  Augustine ;  and  these  in  turn  came  to  be 
classed  with  monks  as  distinguished  from  the  others. 
In  addition,  there  sprang  up  in  the  Middle  Ages 
a  number  of  unattached  or  itinerant  priests,  as  well 
as  private  chaplains. 

In  every  order  alike,  however,  an  economic  interest 
was  sooner  or  later  the  ruling  motive.  Beneficed 
priests  wrought  for  the  church  under  which  they  had 
their  income,  keeping  as  much  of  it  as  they  could, 
but  recognising  the  need  for  official  union ;  and  the 
monastic  orders  in  their  turn  grew  wealthy  by  endow- 
ments, and  zealous  in  proportion  for  the  temporal 
power  of  the  Church.  As  always,  the  self-denying 
and  devoted  were  a  minority ;  but  the  worldly  and 
the  unworldly  alike  wrought  everywhere  in  the 
political  interests  of  the  kings,  who  had  established 
and  endowed  the  church  to  begin  with,  and  who  in 
return  were  long  allowed  many  liberties  in  the 
appointment  and  control  of  bishops  and  priests.  A 
common  result  was  the  appointment  of  lay  favourites 
or  benefactors  of  the  king ;  and  bishoprics  seem 
almost  as  often  as  not  to  have  been  in  some  degree 
purchasable.  The  church,  in  short,  was  a  social  and 
political  function  of  each  State,  with  the  papal  system 
loosely  and  variably  co-ordinating  the  whole. 


METHODS  OF  EXPANSION.  209 

§  2.  Methods  of  Expansion. 

Every  extension  of  the  church  being  a  means  of 
power  and  revenue  to  priests,  the  process  was 
furthered  at  once  by  motives  of  selfishness  and  by 
motives  of  self-sacrifice.  In  some  cases  the  latter 
were  effectual,  as  when  a  pious  hermit  won  repute 
among  barbarians  for  sanctity,  and  so  acquired 
spiritual  influence  ;  but  the  normal  process  of  con- 
version seems  to  have  been  by  way  of  appeal  to  chiefs 
or  kings.  When  these  were  convinced  that  Chris- 
tianity was  to  their  interest,  the  baptism  of  their 
more  docile  subjects  followed  wholesale.  Thus  ten 
thousand  Angli  were  claimed  as  baptised  by  Augustine 
in  Kent  on  Christmas  Day  in  the  year  597 — a  transac- 
tion which  reduced  the  rite  to  nullity,  and  the  indivi- 
duality of  the  converts  to  the  level  of  that  of  animals. 
In  this  case  there  can  have  been  no  rational  consent. 
A  little  later,  Heraclius  in  the  East  caused  multitudes 
of  Jews  to  be  dragged  to  baptism  by  force  ;  and  the 
same  course  was  taken  in  Spain  and  Gaul.  Jews  so 
coerced  were  only  more  anti-Christian  than  before ; 
and  wholesale  relapses  of  barbarian  converts  were 
nearly  as  common  as  the  wholesale  captures,  till  the 
cause  of  kings  won  the  mastery.  Nowhere  does  the 
church  seem  to  have  grown  from  within  and  upward 
among  barbarians  as  it  had  originally  done  in  the 
empire :  the  process  is  invariably  one  of  imposi- 
tion from  without  and  above,  by  edicts  of  kings,  who 
supported  the  missionaries  with  the  sword.  As  at  the 
outset  of  the  church,  there  were  deadly  strifes  among 
the  pioneers.  The  earlier  British  church  having  been 
formed  under  influences  from  Ireland,  there  was  such 

p 


210  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

utter  hatred  between  its  remnants  and  the  Komanised 
church  set  up  by  Augustine  that,  apparently  after  his 
death,  twelve  hundred  monks  of  the  older  church 
were  massacred  at  Bangor  in  one  of  the  wars  between 
the  two  Christian  parties ;  and  the  Britons,  not  unnatu- 
rally, refused  to  have  any  intercourse  with  their 
brethren,  regarding  them  as  worse  than  heathens. 
The  Englishman  Boniface,  who  played  a  large  part 
(720-755)  in  the  Christianisation  of  northern  Germany, 
and  who  in  the  usual  fashion  claimed  to  have  baptised 
a  hundred  thousand  natives  in  one  year,  secured  the 
excommunication  of  several  rival  bishops  of  the  anti- 
Roman  school ;  and  those  who  would  not  accept 
re-ordination  at  his  hands  he  sought  to  have 
imprisoned  or  flogged,  denouncing  them,  in  the 
style  of  the  churchman  of  all  ages,  as  "  servants  of 
the  devil  and  forerunners  of  Antichrist."  His  autho- 
rity was  established  in  new  districts  at  the  head 
of  an  armed  force ;  and  when  with  fifty  priests  he 
met  his  death  (755)  in  Friesland  at  the  hands  of 
heathen  natives,  he  was  marching  with  a  troop  of 
soldiers.  Even  where  force  was  not  used,  the  persua- 
sions offered  were  of  the  grossest  kind.  Thus  a 
friend  of  Boniface  is  found  advising  him  to  point 
out  to  the  heathen  that  the  Christians  have  the  bulk 
and  the  best  of  the  world,  possessing  all  the  rich 
lands  which  yield  wine  and  oil,  while  the  pagans 
are  now  confined  to  the  coldest  and  most  barren 
regions.  No  religion  was  ever  more  un  spiritually 
propagated. 

Under  Charlemagne,  Christian  missionary  methods 
left  those  of  Islam  in  the  rear.  For  the  subjection 
of  the  still  free  Saxons,  between  the  Baltic  and  the 
borders  of  Thuringia  and  Hesse,  he  needed  the  aid 


METHODS  OF  EXPANSION. 


211 


of  the  church's  organisation ;  and  they,  realising  the 
state  of  the  case,  for  the  most  part  refused  to  be 
baptised.  In  his  wars  with  them,  accordingly,  he 
decreed  that  those  who  rejected  the  gospel  should 
be  put  to  death.  As  the  wars  lasted  thirty- three 
years,  the  number  of  the  slain  must  be  left  to 
imagination.  The  survivors  were  finally  bribed  into 
belief  by  a  restoration  of  their  local  rights,  and  by 
being  freed  from  tribute  to  the  king.  They  do  not 
seem,  however,  to  have  been  freed  from  the  exactions 
of  the  church,  which,  according  to  the  testimony  of 
Charlemagne's  adviser,  Alcuin,  had  been  a  main 
cause  of  the  exasperation  of  the  Saxons  against  it. 
Among  those  exactions  Alcuin  mentions  not  only 
tithes — which  had  now  become  a  recognised  form  of 
church  revenue — but  the  infliction  of  many  penalties 
for  moral  and  ecclesiastical  offences.  Such  exactions 
the  monarch  endorsed ;  and  he  it  was  who  enforced 
the  payment  of  tithes. 

King  and  priest  were  thus  natural  allies  as  against 
the  freemen  or  the  chieftains  in  each  territory  ;  and 
the  advance  of  the  church  was  bloody  or  bloodless 
according  as  the  king  was  able  to  enforce  his  will. 
In  the  Scandinavian  countries  the  founding  of  Chris- 
tianity was  a  life-and-death  struggle,  lasting  in  all 
for  some  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  (820-1075), 
between  the  local  liberties,  bound  up  with  pagan 
usages,  and  the  centralising  system  of  the  church. 
Again  and  again  the  church  was  overthrown,  with 
the  king  who  championed  it ;  and  the  special  ferocity 
of  the  marauding  vikings  against  churchmen  wherever 
they  went  seems  to  have  been  set  up  by  their  sense 
of  the  church's  monarchic  function.  The  fact  that 
many  priests  were  ex-serfs  made  them  the  more 


212  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

obnoxious ;  and  they  in  turn  would  strive  the  more 
zealously  for  the  church's  protecting  power.  But  the 
church's  political  work  did  not  end  with  the  humbling 
of  the  vikings,  as  such,  at  the  hands  of  the  kings  who 
finally  mastered  them  :  it  endorsed  the  aggressive 
imperialism  of  the  Danish  king  Knut  as  it  had  done 
that  of  Borne  ;  and  never  till  the  time  of  the  Crusades 
does  the  ostensible  universality  of  the  church  seem  to 
have  checked  the  old  play  of  racial  hatreds  and  the 
normal  lust  of  conquest.  So  clearly  did  Charlemagne 
realise  the  political  use  of  the  church  that,  while  he 
imposed  it  everywhere  in  his  own  dominions,  he 
vetoed  its  extension  to  Denmark,  where  it  would  be 
a  means  of  organising  a  probably  hostile  power, 
many  of  the  stubborn  Saxons  having  fled  thither. 
From  the  moment  of  its  establishment  it  had  .been 
stamped  with  the  principle  of  political  autocracy ; 
and  only  when  its  own  mounting  power  and  wealth 
made  it  a  world- State  in  itself  did  it  restrain,  in  its 
own  interest,  the  power  of  kings.  In  the  earlier 
stages,  king  and  church  supported  each  other  for 
their  own  sakes ;  and  it  was  as  a  political  instrument, 
whose  value  had  been  proved  in  the  Roman  Empire, 
that  the  church  was  sooner  or  later  accepted  by  the 
barbarian  kings.  All  the  while  popes  and  prelates 
complained  bitterly  that  many  of  the  converts  thus 
won  were  baptised  and  rebaptised,  yet  continued  to 
live  as  heathens,  slaying  priests  and  sacrificing  to 
idols.  When,  however,  open  heathenism  was  beaten 
down,  the  combined  political  and  religious  prestige  of 
the  Christian  priest  gave  him  a  hold  over  the  multi- 
tude, forever  superstitious,  such  as  those  of  the 
heathen  times  had  never  wielded  save  in  Gaul.  To 
the  new  regal  tyranny  was  added  that  of  the  Church. 


METHODS  OF  EXPANSION.  213 

When  the  Servians,  who  had  been  nominally  Chris- 
tianised under  the  rule  of  Byzantium  in  the  eighth 
century,  regained  their  independence  in  the  ninth, 
they  significantly  renounced  Christianity ;  and  only 
after  re-conquest  were  they  again  "  converted." 

To  the  general  rule  of  propagation  by  regal  edict 
or  by  bloodshed  there  were  a  few  partial  exceptions. 
Vladimir,  the  first  Christian  king  of  the  Russians 
(980),  destroyed  the  old  monuments  and  images  in 
the  usual  fashion  ;  but  under  the  auspices  of  his  wife, 
the  sister  of  the  Byzantine  emperor,  Greek  mis- 
sionaries set  up  many  schools  and  churches,  and  the 
kingdom  seems  to  have  been  bloodlessly  Christianised 
within  three  generations.  It  accordingly  remained 
Christian  under  the  two  and  a  half  centuries  of 
Mongol  rule,  from  1223.  Elsewhere  the  conver- 
sion of  the  Slavs  was  a  process  of  sheer  monarchic 
violence,  as  in  Scandinavia.  Always  it  was  the 
duke  or  king  who  was  "  converted,"  and  always 
his  propaganda  was  that  of  the  sword.  Through 
three  reigns  (870-936)  heathen  Bohemia  was  be- 
devilled by  dukes  who  coerced  their  subjects  with 
the  church's  help  :  a  pagan  prince  who  led  a  successful 
revolt,  but  was  overthrown  by  a  German  invasion, 
lives  in  history  as  Boleslav  the  Cruel ;  and  an  equally 
cruel  successor,  who  with  German  help  used  the 
same  means  on  behalf  of  Christianity,  figures  as 
Boleslav  the  Pious  (967-999).  The  same  process 
went  on  in  Poland ;  the  converted  duke  (967) ,  backed 
by  his  German  overlords,  seeking  to  suppress  pagan 
worship  with  violence  and  meeting  violent  resistance. 
So  among  the  Wends,  who  were  also  under  German 
vassalage,  the  missionary  was  seen  to  be  the  tool  of 
the  tyrant,  and  the  cause  of  paganism  was  identified 


214  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

with  that  of  national  independence.  After  generations 
of  savage  struggle,  Gottschalk,  the  pious  founder  of 
the  Wendish  empire,  was  overthrown  (1066)  and  put 
to  death  with  torture.  So  in  Hungary,  where  king 
Stephen  (997-1038)  combined  slaughter  with  better 
propaganda,  the  king's  death  was  followed  by  a  despe- 
rate pagan  revolt,  which  was  twice  renewed  under  his 
son. 

Century  after  century,  expansion  proceeded  on  the 
same  lines.  The  Finns,  conquered  in  the  twelfth 
century  by  a  Christian  king  of  Sweden,  were  still  per- 
sistently pagan  in  the  thirteenth,  and  were  bloodily 
coerced  accordingly.  In  the  conversion  of  the  Slavonic 
Pomeranians  in  the  twelfth  century,  armed  force, 
headed  by  the  duke,  was  needed  to  secure  wholesale 
baptisms  after  the  fashion  of  Augustine  and  Boniface ; 
the  people  of  Liibeck,  on  the  opportunity  of  an 
emperor's  death,  revolted  in  favour  of  paganism  and 
independence  ;  and  the  pagans  of  the  isle  of  Biigen 
were  Christianised  in  mass  by  Danish  conquest  (1168). 
It  is  recorded  by  the  biographer  of  St.  Otho  that  the 
Pomeranians  expressly  rejected  Christianity  on  the 
score  of  its  cruelty,  saying,  "  among  the  Christians 
are  thieves  and  robbers  [unknown  among  the  heathen 
Slavs]  :  Christians  crucify  men  and  tear  out  eyes  and 
do  all  manner  of  infamies  :  be  such  a  religion  far  from 
us."  The  attempt  to  convert  Livonia  by  preaching  was 
an  absolute  failure  ;  two  crusades  had  to  be  set  on  foot 
by  the  Pope  and  the  surrounding  Christians  to  crush  its 
paganism  (circa  1200)  ;  and  finally  an  "  Order  of  the 
Sword  "  had  to  be  organised  to  hold  the  religious 
ground.  A  little  later,  two  "Orders  of  Teutonic 
Knights  "  in  succession  were  established  to  conquer 
and  convert  the  heathen  Prussians ;  and  after  sixty 


METHODS  OF  EXPANSION.  215 

years  of  murderous  and  ruinous  warfare,  "  a  broken 
remnant,  shielded  in  some  measure  by  the  intervention 
of  the  popes,  were  induced  to  discontinue  all  the 
heathen  rites,  to  recognise  the  claims  of  the  Teutonic 
Order,  and  to  welcome  the  instruction  of  the  German 
priests."  Another  remnant,  utterly  unsubduable, 
sought  refuge  with  the  heathens  of  Lithuania. 

The  summary  of  seven  hundred  years  of  Christian 
expansion  in  northern  Europe  is  that  the  work  was  in 
the  main  done  by  the  sword,  in  the  interests  of  kings 
and  tyrants,  who  supported  it,  as  against  the  resistance 
of  their  subjects,  who  saw  in  the  church  an  instrument 
for  their  subjection.  Christianity  in  short  was  as 
truly  a  religion  of  the  sword  as  Islam.  When  the 
Mongols  conquered  part  of  Bussia  in  1223  they  not 
only  left  the  Christians  full  religious  liberty  but  let 
the  priests  go  untaxed  ;  and  similarly  the  Turks  left 
to  the  Bulgarians  their  faith,  their  lands,  and  their 
local  laws.  Christianity  gave  no  such  toleration ;  the 
lands  of  the  heathen  Slavs  and  Prussians  being  dis- 
tributed among  their  German  conquerors.  The 
heathen,  broadly  speaking,  were  never  persuaded,  never 
convinced,  never  won  by  the  appeal  of  the  new  doc- 
trine :  they  were  either  transferred  by  their  kings  to  the 
church  like  so  many  cattle  or  beaten  down  into  sub- 
mission after  generations  of  resistance  and  massacre. 
For  a  long  time  after  the  German  conquest  any  Slav 
found  away  from  home  was  liable  to  be  executed  on 
the  spot,  or  killed  like  a  wild  beast  by  any  Christian  who 
would.  And  centuries  after  the  barbarian  heathenism  of 
Europe  was  ostensibly  drowned  in  blood,  Christian 
Spain,  having  overthrown  the  Moslem  Moors,  proceeded 
in  the  same  fashion  to  dragoon  Moslems  and  Jews  into 
the  true  faith,  baptising  in  droves  those  who  yielded 


216  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

or  dissembled,  and  driving  out  of  the  country  myriads 
more  who  would  not  submit.  The  misery  and  the 
butchery  wrought  from  first  to  last  are  unimaginable. 
If  the  Spanish  conquests  of  Mexico  and  Peru,  with 
their  church-blessed  policy  of  suppressing  heathenism, 
be  added  to  the  record,  the  totality  of  evil  becomes 
appalling  ;  for  the  Spanish  priest  Las  Casas  estimated 
the  total  destruction  of  native  life  at  twelve  millions. 
All  this  slaughter  took  place  by  way  of  "  expansion," 
and  is  exclusive  of  the  further  record  of  the  slaughters 
wrought  by  the  Church  for  the  suppression  of  heresy 
within  its  established  field.  It  is  a  strange  preposses- 
sion that,  in  face  of  such  a  retrospect,  habitually  con- 
centrates Christian  thought  on  the  remote  and 
transient  persecutions  of  Christianity  by  ancient 
paganism.  If  the  blood  shed  on  the  score  of  religion 
by  paganism  and  Christianity  respectively  be  carefully 
estimated,  the  former  might  say  to  the  latter,  in  the 
words  of  the  latter-day  heathen  king  of  the  Zulus 
who  was  crushed  by  an  ostentatiously  Christian  states- 
manship :  "  The  blood  shed  in  my  reign  was,  to  the 
blood  shed  since,  as  an  ant  in  a  pool  of  water." 


§  3.  Growth  of  the  Papacy. 

One  marked  result  of  the  triumph  of  Islam  in  the 
east  and  of  barbarism  in  the  west  was  the  growth  of 
the  Roman  Papacy  as  the  supreme  ecclesiastical  power 
in  Latin  Christendom.  So  long  as  an  emperor  had  his 
seat  in  Italy,  the  bishop  or  patriarch  of  Rome  was 
kept  in  subordination  to  the  State ;  and  at  Constanti- 
nople the  subordination  of  the  patriarch  never  ceased. 
But  even  in  the  period  from  the  reconquest  of  Italy 


GROWTH  OF  THE  PAPACY.  217 

under  Justinian  to  the  final  renunciation  of  Byzantine 
rule,  though  the  Roman  patriarchs  depended  on  the 
emperor  to  ratify  their  election,  the  curtailment  of  the 
eastern  empire,  narrowing  as  it  did  the  range  of  the 
eastern  Church,  weakened  that  relatively  to  the 
western ;  while  the  absence  of  local  monarchy  left  the 
way  open  for  an  ecclesiastical  rule,  calling  itself 
theocratic.  Had  the  Italian  kingdom  of  Theodoric 
subsisted,  the  development  would  certainly  have  been 
different.  As  it  was,  even  he,  an  Arian,  was  called  in 
to  control  the  riotous  strifes  of  papal  factions  in  Rome. 
It  belonged  to  all  the  patriarchates,  as  to  all 
bishoprics,  that  their  tenants  should  magnify  their 
office  ;  and  even  in  the  second  century  we  have  seen 
signs  of  an  ambition  in  the  Roman  bishop  to  rule  the 
rest  of  the  Church.  Already,  presumably,  there 
existed  the  gospel  text :  "  Thou  art  Petros,  and  upon 
this  rock  (petra)  I  will  build  my  church" — an  inter- 
polation probably  made  in  the  Roman  interest,  and 
sure  to  sustain  a  Roman  ambition  for  general  head- 
ship. But  as  late  as  the  fifth  century  some  codices 
seem  to  have  read  simply  "  Thou  hast  said";  (<ru  €«ras 
instead  of  ov  ei"  Her/sos)  ;  and  in  the  third  we  find 
Cyprian  of  Carthage  insisting  on  the  indepen- 
dence of  his  church  while  admitting  the  ceremonial 
primacy  of  Rome — a  proof  that  the  Roman  claim  was 
being  pushed.  In  the  fourth  century,  Pope  Damasus 
sought  to  induce  the  eastern  bishops  to  go  to  Rome  for 
the  settlement  of  disputes  as  to  certain  eastern 
bishoprics ;  but  was  sardonically  admonished  by  a 
unanimous  eastern  council  to  alter  his  attitude. 
While  the  old  empire  subsisted,  the  Roman  bishop 
could  get  no  further  than  his  old  ceremonial  status  as 
holding  the  primary  see  in  order  of  dignity.  Neither 


218  MEDIEVAL  CHKISTIANITY. 

the  emperor  nor  the  patriarch  at  Constantinople  would 
consent  to  vest  any  supreme  authority  in  the  bishop  of 
the  ancient  and  relatively  effete  capital;  and  Theo- 
dosius  definitely  constituted  the  patriarch  of  Constanti- 
nople the  equal  of  him  of  Rome  (381),  though 
ceremonially  second  to  him.  At  the  same  time,  the 
patriarch  of  Constantinople  was  set  above  those  of 
Antioch  and  Alexandria,  a  step  which  promoted  the 
worst  of  the  later  schisms  and  so  helped  to  lose  Egypt 
and  Syria.  On  every  side,  the  normal  egoisms  and 
racial  instincts  can  thus  be  seen  determining  the 
fortunes  of  the  faith.  The  fling  of  the  Greek  Basil  at 
Rome,  "  I  hate  the  pride  of  that  church,"  is  typical. 
Even  while  the  Roman  bishop  was  pushing  his  claims 
to  primacy,  the  see  of  Constantinople,  backed  by  the 
emperor,  was  taking  province  after  province  from  the 
Roman  jurisdiction ;  and  in  451  the  Council  of 
Chalcedon,  with  the  support  of  the  eastern  emperor, 
decreed  that  the  bishop  of  "  New  Rome  "  should  enjoy 
equal  honour  and  privilege  with  his  rival.  At  the 
same  period  the  bishop  of  Jerusalem,  claiming  primacy 
in  his  turn,  contrived  to  gain  ground  as  against  those 
of  Antioch  and  Alexandria.  Each  patriarchate  fought 
for  its  own  hand.  The  use  of  the  special  title  of 
"  Papa  "  by  him  of  Rome  was  probably  an  imitation 
of  Mithraism,  in  the  hierarchy  of  which  the  chief 
priest  was  "  Father  of  Fathers,"  as  the  God  was 
"  Father  Mithra,"  and,  like  Attis,  probably  called 
Papa.  In  the  Eastern  church  the  name  became 
general,  all  priests  being  "popes." 

In  the  history  of  the  Papacy,  it  is  the  two  early 
bishops  most  distinguished  for  widening  the  power  of 
the  church  that  alone  have  won  the  title  of  "  Great," 
to  wit,  Leo  I.  (440-461)  and  Gregory  I.  (590-604),  ol 


GROWTH  OF  THE  PAPACY.  219 

whom  the  first  began  to  build  up  the  Church's  local 
patrimony  on  the  fall  of  the  western  empire,  and  the 
second  to  establish  her  spiritual  reign  in  the  north. 
It  is  under  the  latter  that  the  destiny  of  the  Roman 
see  as  the  head  of  the  western  churches  begins  clearly 
to  reveal  itself.  The  patriarch  of  Constantinople  of 
that  day  took  to  himself  the  title  of  (Ecumenical  or 
Universal ;  and  Gregory,  whose  predecessors  had 
aimed  at  that  very  status,  pronounced  the  claim 
blasphemous,  antichristian,  and  diabolical.  A  few 
years  later,  he  was  securing  through  the  lesser 
Augustine  his  own  supremacy  over  the  previously  in- 
dependent churches  of  Britain.  He  even  seems  to 
have  cringed  to  the  usurping  Byzantine  emperor 
Phocas  in  order  to  get  him  to  veto  the  claim  of  his 
rival,  a  concession  which  appears  to  have  been  granted 
to  Boniface  III.  in  606.  Still  the  papacy  had  to  fight 
hard  for  its  claims  in  Britain,  Gaul,  and  Spain ;  and 
towards  the  end  of  the  seventh  century  Bishop  Julian 
of  Toledo  is  found  rating  Benedict  II.  for  ignorance 
and  jealousy.  As  Julian  was  nevertheless  sainted,  we 
may  infer  that  the  jealousies  of  rival  candidates  for 
the  papacy,  leading  to  changes  of  policy,  often  checked 
its  political  growth.  But  events  forced  a  policy.  In 
the  eighth  century  the  iconoclastic  emperors  quarrelled 
with  the  papacy  (under  Gregory  II.)  as  well  as  with 
Greek  orthodoxy ;  whereupon  the  northern  Lombards 
sought  to  become  masters  of  what  remained  of 
imperial  territory  in  Italy  ;  and  of  a  series  of  eight 
or  nine  Popes  (730-772)  the  majority  were  fain  to 
call  in  the  help  of  the  Franks.  Charles  Martel  did 
not  actively  respond ;  but  his  son  Pepin  did  twice,  and 
as  victor  presented  to  the  Pope  (754)  the  sovereignty  of 
the  exarchate,  receiving  in  return  the  pontiff's 


220  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

sanction  to  depose  the  last  feeble  Merovingian  king,  in 
whose  name  the  house  of  Pepin  had  ruled.  The  end 
of  the  new  departure  was  the  conquest  of  the  Lom- 
bards by  Charlemagne  in  774,  and  the  establishment 
in  800  of  the  new  "  Holy  Roman  Empire,"  wherein 
the  Pope  was  the  spiritual  colleague  of  the  emperor. 

Hitherto  the  bishop  of  Rome  had  been  popularly 
elected  like  every  other,  and  subject  like  every  other 
to  acceptance  by  the  emperor.  But  after  Pope 
Zacharias  (741-752)  the  eastern  emperor  was  ignored ; 
and  Charlemagne  was  crowned  as  the  successor,  by 
Roman  decision,  not  of  the  old  emperors  of  the  west, 
but  of  the  line  of  emperors  which  in  the  east  had 
never  ceased.  Constantine  VI.,  who  had  just  been 
deposed  by  his  mother  Irene  (797),  was  the  sixty- 
seventh  "Roman"  emperor  in  order  from  Augustus, 
and  Charlemagne  was  enrolled  in  the  west  as  the 
sixty-eighth.  He  even  received,  with  the  diplomatic 
assent  of  Haroun  Alraschid,  the  keys  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre  from  the  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem — an  empty 
but  suggestive  honour.  It  was  thus  inevitable  that 
the  new  imperial  line  should  sooner  or  later  seek  to 
hold  power  over  the  papacy  as  the  old  had  claimed  to 
do  ;  and  Charlemagne  made  his  force  felt  very  much 
as  Constantine  had  done,  going  even  further  in  the 
way  of  appointing  bishops,  and  lecturing  the  pope  at 
times  with  the  consciousness  of  virtual  supremacy.  So 
long  as  the  emperor,  needing  and  using  the  services  of 
the  church  to  organise  his  administration,  enriched 
the  hierarchy  on  all  hands,  enforcing  tithes  and  pro- 
tecting the  entire  priesthood  against  lay  turbulence,  his 
pretensions  were  naturally  allowed.  Everything  de- 
pended on  the  strength  of  the  ruler ;  and  already  under 
Charlemagne's  good  but  weak  son  Louis  we  find  many 


GROWTH  OF  THE  PAPACY.  221 

of  the  bishops,  backed  by  the  pope,  supporting  the 
emperor's  rebellious  sons  and  claiming  to  depose  him. 
About  875,  again,  we  find  Pope  John  VIII.  not  only 
hectoring  the  weak  Charles  the  Fat  but  claiming  the 
right  to  choose  the  emperor.  Until,  however,  there 
began  to  rise  in  Italy  a  new  and  vigorous  civilisation, 
the  papacy  was  on  the  whole  discreetly  subject  to  the 
ratification  of  the  northern  emperors  ;  and  this  is  per- 
haps the  period  of  maximum  demoralisation  and  dis- 
honour in  its  history ;  its  economic  evolution  being 
very  much  on  the  lines  of  that  of  the  original  Church 
in  the  centuries  from  its  establishment  by  Constantine 
till  the  humiliation  of  the  empire  by  the  Moslems. 
Intellectually,  the  papacy  had  no  prestige  within  the 
Church.  It  was  in  824  that  a  council  of  Prankish 
bishops  at  Paris,  following  on  previous  declarations, 
denounced  as  absurdity  the  decrees  of  the  Pope  enjoin- 
ing the  worship  of  images.  Even  when  the  Pope 
Gregory  IV.  entered  France  to  support  the  bishops 
who  backed  the  rebellious  sons  of  Louis,  and 
threatened  to  excommunicate  those  on  the  emperor's 
side,  the  latter  treated  him  with  indignant  contempt. 

It  is  in  this  period,  however,  that  there  begins  the 
process  of  documentary  fraud  by  which  the  Church, 
wielding  the  power  of  the  pen,  gradually  circumvented 
that  of  the  sword.  Centuries  before,  the  Roman  see 
had  made  use  of  forged  documents  in  its  disputes  with 
Constantinople ;  and  the  Greeks  of  the  day  declared 
such  forgeries  to  be  a  special  Roman  industry.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  most  of  the  early  ecclesiastical  forgeries 
had  been  of  eastern  origin  :  for  instance  the  so-called 
Apostles'  Creed  and  the  Apostolical  Constitutions.  Of 
these  the  first  grew  up  fortuitously  in  the  third  century, 
and  received  its  name  after  it  won  currency.  Only  in 


222  MEDIEVAL  CHEISTIANITY. 

the  later  middle  ages  was  it  adopted  by  the  Latin 
Church.  The  Constitutions  again  were  a  deliberate 
compilation  ;  and  the  Koman  Church  had  invented 
nothing  on  the  same  scale.  But  in  the  ninth  century 
there  was  trumped-up  among  the  Frankish  bishops, 
under  the  name  of  Isidore  (ostensibly  the  popular 
encyclopedist  of  Seville,  d.  636),  a  collection  of  pro- 
fessedly ancient  but  really  spurious  papal  decretals, 
partly  proceeding  on  previous  practice,  but  greatly 
developing  it  as  regarded  the  local  independence  of 
bishops  and  their  right  of  appeal  to  Kome.  The 
original  motive  of  the  fraud  was  local  episcopal 
interest,  the  bishops  having  endless  causes  of  grievance 
against  their  archbishops,  kings,  and  lay  lords.  But 
Pope  Nicholas  I.  (858-867)  adroitly  adopted  the  forged 
decretals,  professing  to  have  had  ancient  copies  of 
them,  and  thenceforth  they  were  made  the  basis  of 
the  papal  claims  wherever  political  circumstances 
gave  a  good  opportunity.  The  bishops,  being  thus 
delivered  over  to  the  papacy,  lost  much  more  than 
they  gained.  A  common  use  now  made  of  the 
growing  papal  power  was  to  give  monasteries  an 
exemption  from  the  local  bishop's  rule ;  and  as  the 
monks  in  general  at  this  period  had  a  higher 
character  for  sanctity  than  the  bishops,  who  were 
often  extremely  unreverend,  local  sympathy  was  apt 
to  go  with  the  former,  and  with  the  pope,  whose 
distant  misdeeds  were  little  known  to  the  laity. 

As  in  previous  ages,  nevertheless,  the  disorders  of 
the  papacy  itself  greatly  hampered  its  advance.  In 
the  period  from  John  VIII.  to  Leo  IX.  (1048)  six 
popes  were  deposed,  two  murdered,  and  one  muti- 
lated ;  prolonged  contests  for  the  chair  were  frequent ; 
and  in  the  main  it  was  disposed  of  by  factions  of 


GROWTH  OF  THE  PAPACY.  223 

the  Koinan  and  Italian  nobility.  For  a  time  the 
counts  of  Tuscany  made  it  hereditary  in  their  family ; 
and  once  a  Roman  courtesan  of  the  higher  order 
decided  the  election,  by  help  of  the  general  worthless- 
ness  of  the  Roman  electoral  populace,  who,  having 
neither  commerce  nor  industry,  were  fed  by  papal 
doles  as  of  old  they  had  been  by  the  emperors.  In 
the  tenth  century,  the  papacy  had  reached  its  nadir. 
The  general  expectation,  based  on  the  Apocalypse  and 
other  Christian  tradition,  that  the  world  would  end 
with  the  year  1000,  seems  to  have  turned  the  thoughts 
of  the  more  serious  away  from  worldly  questions; 
while  the  more  reckless  types,  lawless  at  best  in  that 
age,  exhibited  something  of  the  wild  licence  seen  at 
times  in  cities  stricken  by  pestilence,  and  ships  about 
to  sink.  When  the  dreaded  year  was  past,  riot  was 
even  quickened ;  but  in  the  eleventh  century  a  moral 
instinct  began  slowly  to  assert  itself.  The  elections 
to  the  papacy  had  become  so  scandalous  and  ruinous 
— three  pretenders  claiming  the  chair  at  once — that 
the  clergy  themselves  conceded  to  the  emperor 
Henry  III.,  in  the  year  1047,  the  right  to  appoint 
popes ;  and  he  used  his  power  four  times  with  judg- 
ment and  success. 

Naturally,  however,  the  reform  strengthened  the 
papacy  rather  than  the  emperor.  Pope  Nicholas  II., 
acting  on  the  advice  of  his  powerful  secretary,  the 
monk  Hildebrand,  who  was  to  be  one  of  his  successors, 
decreed  (1059)  that  the  election  of  all  bishops  should 
lie  with  the  local  "  chapters  "  and  the  pope  ;  and  that 
the  election  of  the  pope  should  in  future  be  made  by 
the  seven  cardinal  bishops  of  the  Roman  district, 
with  the  assent  first  of  the  cardinal  priests  and 
deacons  of  the  Roman  churches,  and  next  of  the 


224  MEDIEVAL  CHKISTIANITY. 

laity ;  the  choice  to  be  ratified  by  Henry  IV.,  then  a 
minor,  or  by  such  of  his  successors  as  should  obtain 
the  same  privilege.  Yet  on  the  death  of  Nicholas, 
Hildebrand  procured  the  election  and  consecration  of 
Alexander  II.  without  waiting  for  any  ratification ; 
and  when  he  himself  became  Pope  as  Gregory  VII. 
(1073)  he  was  on  the  alert  for  his  famous  struggle 
with  Henry  over  the  claim  of  the  temporal  power  to 
appoint  bishops.  Standing  on  the  forged  decretals, 
with  an  almost  maniacal  belief  in  his  divine  rights, 
he  claimed  as  pope  not  only  the  sole  power  to  confirm 
bishops  but  the  power  to  take  or  give  the  possessions 
of  all  men  as  he  would ;  and  he  threatened  deposi- 
tion to  any  king  who  dared  to  gainsay  him.  It  was  in 
the  course  of  the  struggle  with  Henry,  by  the  use  of 
the  now  common  weapon  of  excommunication,  that 
he  reduced  the  emperor  to  his  historic  act  of  self- 
abasement  (1077)  at  Canossa. 

•  The  circumstances  were  in  the  main  in  the  pope's 
favour,  Henry  being  rebelled  against  in  Germany,  and 
Gregory  being  well  able  to  manipulate  disaffection. 
At  the  same  time,  Gregory's  strenuous  efforts  to 
"  reform "  the  church  by  forcing  celibacy  on  the 
entire  priesthood  had  set  against  him  multitudes  of 
the  Italian  and  northern  clergy,  married  and  other- 
wise ;  and  these  were  indignant  at  Henry's  surrender. 
Stimulated  by  their  protests,  and  by  the  sympathy  of 
various  kings  whom  the  pope  had  arrogantly  menaced, 
he  took  heart,  put  down  his  rebels  and  rivals  at  home, 
and  marched  in  force  into  Italy,  where  he  met  almost 
no  resistance  and  was  crowned  by  the  antipope 
Clement  III.,  whom  he  and  his  party  had  appointed. 
Gregory,  besieged  by  his  own  flock  in  the  castle  of 
St.  Angelo,  called  in  his  late-made  ally  the  Norman 


GROWTH  OF  THE  PAPACY.  225 

Robert  Guiscard,  Duke  of  Sicily,  who  in  releasing 
him  burnt  much  of  the  city,  and,  after  a  sack  and 
massacre,  sold  most  of  the  remaining  inhabitants  as 
slaves.  Everywhere  the  Pope's  cause  was  lost,  and 
he  died  defeated,  in  exile  at  Salerno  under  Norman 
protection,  hated  by  both  priests  and  people  as  the 
bringer  of  slaughter  and  misery  on  Germany  and 
Italy  alike.  The  reforming  pontiff  had  wrought  far 
more  evil  than  his  most  sinful  predecessors,  and  still 
the  church  was  not  reformed. 

Henry,  rebelled  against  by  his  sons,  died  broken- 
hearted like  his  enemy ;  and  for  half  a  century  the 
strife  over  "  lay  investitures"  was  carried  on  by  popes 
and  emperors.  The  papacy  had  thus  become  the  evil 
genius  at  once  of  Italy  and  of  Germany,  entering  into 
and  intensifying  every  Italian  feud,  and  giving  to 
German  feudalism  a  fatal  ground  of  combat  for 
centuries.  Out  of  all  the  strife  the  papacy  made  profit. 
When  the  war  of  the  investitures  was  over,  it  built  up 
the  Decretum  of  the  monk  Gratian,  a  code  embodying 
the  Isidorean  frauds  with  others,  such  as  the  gross 
pretence  that  St.  Augustine  had  declared  the  Decretals 
to  be  of  the  same  status  with  the  canonical  scriptures. 
The  war,  meantime,  had  ended  in  a  compromise  from 
which  the  papacy  substantially  gained.  The  result 
was  to  turn  it  ere  long  into  a  vast  system  of  financial 
exploitation.  Every  evil  in  the  way  of  simony  and 
corruption  against  which  Hildebrand  had  revolted  was 
further  developed  under  papal  auspices.  The  people 
lost  all  power  of  electing  their  bishops  ;  and  the  rich 
chapters,  on  whom  the  right  devolved,  became  the 
field  of  simony  for  the  nobles ;  while  the  pope  drew 
from  the  sale  of  his  ratifications  an  immense  revenue. 
So  rapid  was  the  effect  of  the  new  relation  that  by  the 

Q 


226  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

middle  of  the  twelfth  century  the  bulk  of  the  current 
literature  of  Europe,  serious  and  satirical,  was  bitterly 
hostile  to  Rome,  which  now  impressed  instructed  men 
chiefly  as  a  great  machine  for  extortion.  While  the 
church  officially  denounced  usury,  its  own  usurers 
were  everywhere  drawing  interest  from  prelates  who 
had  had  to  borrow  money  to  buy  their  investitures. 
The  pretence  of  making  the  clergy  "  unworldly  "  by 
enforced  celibacy  was  under  such  circumstances  not 
edifying.  Needless  to  say,  while  clerical  marriage 
could  be  officially  put  down,  clerical  concubinage  was 
not. 

The  strength  of  the  papacy  as  against  its  many 
enemies  lay  (1)  in  the  strifes  of  States  and  nations,  in 
which  the  pope  could  always  intervene ;  (2)  in  the 
feeling  of  serious  men  that  a  central  power  was  needed 
to  control  strife  and  tyranny ;  (3)  in  the  compiled 
system  of  canon  law,  which  expanded  still  further  the 
code  of  the  Decretals  and  of  Gratian,  and  constantly 
exalted  the  papal  power  ;  (4)  in  the  orders  of 
preaching  friars,  who  acted  as  papal  emissaries,  and 
kept  in  partial  discredit  the  local  clergy  everywhere  ; 
and  (5)  in  the  power  of  the  pope  to  appeal  to  the 
worst  motives  of  ignorant  believers.  Thus  at  the 
beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century  Innocent  III.,  a 
zealous  champion  of  the  papal  power,  was  able  in  the 
teeth  of  the  common  hostility  of  educated  men  to 
evoke  an  immense  outburst  of  brutal  fanaticism  by 
offering  indulgences,  spiritual  and  temporal,  to  all 
who  would  join  in  a  crusade  of  massacre  against  the 
Albigensian  and  other  heretics  of  Languedoc,  where 
the  Paulician  and  other  anti-clerical  doctrines  had 
spread  widely.  Twenty  years  of  hideous  bloodshed 
and  demoralization  went  far  to  create  an  atmosphere 


GROWTH  OF  THE  PAPACY.  227 

in  which  criticism  could  not  breathe ;  and  the  whole 
evocation  of  the  eastern  Crusades,  both  before  and 
after  this  period,  was  carried  on  by  the  popes  with  a 
clear  perception  of  the  gain  to  their  authority  from 
the  armed  consensus  of  Christendom  under  their 
appeal,  on  the  proffer  of  indulgences.  They  had 
hoped  to  extend  their  rule  over  the  East,  Christian 
and  paynim ;  but  though  this  dream  came  to  nothing 
they  were  nonetheless  aggrandised  by  the  effort.  The 
revived  pretensions  to  dispose  of  all  unclaimed 
territory  on  the  globe,  to  depose  heretic  princes,  and 
to  confer  sovereignties,  were  all  reinforced. 

When  the  Crusades  had  ceased,  the  papal  curia, 
growing  ever  more  exacting,  began  to  draw  all  manner 
of  yearly  dues  from  churchmen  throughout  its  juris- 
diction, so  that  whereas  in  the  thirteenth  century  it 
had  only  one  auditor  camera,  in  1370  the  pope  had 
more  than  twenty,  and  every  cardinal  had  a  number 
in  addition,  they  living  like  their  superior  by  traffic  in 
privileges.  Under  Gregory  XI.  (1370-78),  seven 
bishops  were  excommunicated  by  one  order  for  failure 
to  pay  their  dues.  Complaint  was  universal ;  but  the 
vested  interests  made  reform  impossible.  When, 
therefore,  the  Renaissance  gradually  gained  ground 
against  all  obstacles,  and  masses  of  men  became 
capable  of  judging  the  papacy  in  the  light  of  history 
and  reason  as  well  as  of  its  own  code,  it  was  inevitable 
that  as  soon  as  local  economic  interests  became 
sufficiently  marked,  an  institution  which  was  every- 
where an  economic  burden  should  incur  an  economic 
revolution. 

In  the  meantime,  the  papacy  had  possessed  itself 
of  the  power  of  life  and  death  in  the  intellectual  as 
well  as  in  the  religious  sphere.  The  power  it 


228  MEDIEVAL  CHKISTIANITY. 

arrogated  to  itself  under  the  false  Isidorean  Decretals 
carried  implicitly  if  not  explicitly  the  attribute  of 
infallibility.  To  pronounce  doctrines  true  or  false 
had  anciently  been  the  function  of  councils ;  it  now 
became  the  function  of  the  pope,  who  thus  treated 
councils  exactly  as  kings  later  treated  parliaments. 
Of  old,  successive  popes  had  notoriously  declared  for 
contrary  dogmas ;  many  had  contradicted  them- 
selves ;  and  down  to  the  thirteenth  century  there  had 
been  a  score  of  papal  schisms,  all  of  which  were 
surpassed  by  those  of  the  fourteenth  century ; 
but  that  reflection  put  no  check  on  later 
decisions  on  the  most  momentous  problems.  The 
religion  which  began  in  private  dissidence  from 
Jewish  and  pagan  orthodoxies  had  become  the  most 
iron  dogmatism  the  world  had  ever  seen  ;  and  the 
whole  system  of  Christian  credence  had  come  to  turn 
on  the  fiat  of  one  man.  At  his  sole  veto  the  sciences 
must  be  dumb  ;  and  to  him  must  come  for  sanction 
those  who  would  found  new  schools.  The  faith  that 
had  begun  as  "  liberty  from  the  yoke  of  the  law  "  had 
come  to  elevate  the  negation  of  mental  liberty  into  a 
principle  of  universal  polity,  translating  into  the  inner 
life  the  despotism  which  the  older  Home  had  placed 
on  the  outer.  Latin  Christianity  had  thus  duplicated 
on  the  one  hand  the  development  of  ancient  Gaulish 
Druidism,  wherein  the  priests  were  a  sacred  and 
ruling  caste  and  the  arch-Druid  semi-divine,  and  on 
the  other  hand  the  evolution  of  the  ancient  Egyptian 
system,  under  which  latterly  the  priesthood  compelled 
the  king  to  obtain  the  approbation  of  the  sacred 
statues  before  taking  any  public  step,  till  at  length 
"  the  true  master  of  Egypt  was  the  Premier  Prophet 
of  the  Theban  Ammon,"  interpreter  of  the  God,  and 


GROWTH  OF  THE  PAPACY.  229 

priest  also  of  the  mediatorial  Son-God  Khonsu.  In 
all  cases  alike  the  sociological  causation  is  transparent 
from  first  to  last ;  and  equally  clear  are  the  special 
conditions  which  prevented  the  Holy  Roman  Empire 
from  following  to  the  end  the  path  trodden  by  ancient 
Egyptian  and  Roman  imperialism. 


CHAPTER  II. 

RELIGIOUS   EVOLUTION   AND    STRIFE. 

§  1.     Growth  of  Idolatry  and  Polytheism. 

BY  the  seventh  century  all  that  idolatry  had  meant 
for  the  early  Christists  was  reproduced  within  the 
Christian  Church  in  east  and  west.  There  was  nothing, 
to  begin  with,  in  the  inner  life  of  the  populace  in  the 
Christian  period  that  could  keep  them  from  the  kinds 
of  belief  natural  to  the  multitude  in  pagan  times. 
Only  under  the  stress  of  a  zealous  movement  of 
reform,  backed  up  by  fanatical  power,  had  image- 
worship  ever  been  put  down  for  a  single  nation,  as 
among  the  Persians  and  later  Jews ;  and  only  the 
original  Jewish  taboo,  backed  by  the  Jewish  sacred 
books,  could  have  kept  Christism  anti-idolatrous  for 
any  length  of  time  after  it  had  passed  beyond  the 
sphere  of  Jewish  proselytism.  After  it  had  become  a 
State  religion,  the  adoption  of  images  was  as  necessary 
to  its  popularity  as  the  adoption  of  pagan  festivals  and 
rites.  Images  of  martyrs  and  holy  men  deceased  seem 
to  have  been  first  venerated  ;  and  when  the  bones  of 
such  were  held  to  have  miraculous  virtue,  and  their 
spirits  were  believed  to  haunt  their  tombs,  it  was 
impossible  that  their  effigies  should  not  come  to  have 
similar  repute.  Dust  from  Palestine  or  other  holy 
places,  again,  was  early  regarded  as  having  magical 
virtue — a  permitted  belief  which  prepared  the  way  for 


GKOWTH  OF  IDOLATRY  AND  POLYTHEISM.          231 

others.  So  with  the  figure  of  the  Christ.  From  the 
first,  the  sign  of  the  cross  was  held  to  be  potent 
against  evil  spirits ;  and  Helena,  the  mother  of  Con- 
stantine,  gave  an  irresistible  vogue  to  the  worship  of 
what  was  alleged  to  be  the  true  cross,  and  to  have 
worked  miraculous  cures.  As  early  as  the  fourth 
century  the  Christians  at  Paneas  in  Palestine  seem  to 
have  taken  an  old  statue  of  a  male  and  a  female 
figure  as  representing  Jesus  healing  the  believing 
woman  ;  and  in  the  sixth  century  paintings  on  linen, 
held  to  have  been  miraculously  made  by  the  face  of 
the  Saviour,  began  to  be  revered.  Being  so  different 
from  pagan  statues,  the  "  idols  "  of  Jewish  aversion, 
they  readily  passed  the  barrier  of  the  traditional  veto 
on  idolatry.  Here  again,  however,  the  lead  came 
from  paganism,  as  we  know  from  Juvenal  that  many 
painters  in  his  day  "  lived  upon  Isis,"  then  the 
fashionable  foreign  deity  at  Rome.  Crucifixes  and 
images  of  all  kinds  inevitably  followed.  Valens  and 
Theodosius  passed  laws  forbidding  pictures  and  icons 
of  Christ ;  but  such  laws  merely  emphasized  an  irre- 
pressible tendency.  As  for  Mary,  her  worship  seems 
from  the  first  to  have  been  associated  with  that  of  old 
statues  of  a  nursing  Goddess-Mother,  and  the  statues 
followed  the  cult,  some  black  statues  of  Isis  and  Horus 
being  worshipped  to  this  day  as  representing  Mary 
and  Jesus. 

When  an  image  was  once  set  up  in  a  sacred  place, 
there  soon  came  into  play  the  old  belief,  common  to 
Egyptians  and  Romans,  that  the  spirit  of  the  being 
represented  would  enter  the  statue.  Hence  all  prayers 
to  saints  were  addressed  wherever  possible  to  their 
images,  and  the  same  usage  followed  the  introduction 
of  images  of  Jesus  and  the  Virgin.  And  while  the 


232  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

Theodosian  code  contained  laws  prohibiting  on  pain  of 
death  the  placing  of  wreaths  on  pagan  statues  and  the 
burning  of  incense  before  them,  the  Christian  populace 
within  a  century  was  doing  those  very  things  to  the 
statues  of  saints.  In  the  same  way  the  use  of  holy 
water,  which  in  the  time  of  Valentinian  was  still  held 
un-christian,  became  universal  in  the  church  a  cen- 
tury or  two  later.  Images  could  not  well  be  left  out. 
The  old  Judaic  conception  of  the  supreme  being  was 
indeed  too  strong  to  permit  of  his  being  imaged; 
though  in  the  fourth  century  the  Audaeans,  a  Syrian 
sect  of  a  puritan  cast,  held  that  the  deity  was  of 
human  shape,  and  were  accordingly  named  Anthro- 
pomorphites ;  but  the  orthodox  insistence  on  the 
human  form  of  Jesus  was  a  lead  to  image-making. 
Thus  for  the  Moslems  the  eastern  Christians  were 
idolaters  as  well  as  polytheists ;  and  the  epistles  of 
Gregory  the  Great  show  him  to  have  zealously 
fostered  the  use  of  miraculous  relics  and  sacred  images 
in  the  west.  Professing  to  condemn  the  worship  of 
images,  he  defended  their  use  against  Bishop  Selenus 
of  Marseilles,  who  ejected  them  from  his  church.  One 
of  Gregory's  specialties  in  relics  was  the  chain  of  St. 
Paul,  from  which  filings  could  be  taken  daily  without 
diminishing  the  total  bulk.  It  was  presumably  while 
all  pagan  usages  were  still  familiar  that  the  Italian 
Christians  adopted  the  custom  of  painting  the  statues 
of  saints  red,  in  the  common  pagan  fashion,  as  they 
did  the  old  custom  of  carrying  the  images  in  proces- 
sion. For  the  rest,  they  had  but  to  turn  to  the  lore 
of  the  pagan  temples  for  examples  of  statues  brought 
from  heaven,  statues  which  worked  miracles,  statues 
which  spoke,  wept,  perspired,  and  bled — all  of  which 
prodigies  became  canonical  in  Christian  idolatry. 


GBOWTH  OF  IDOLATRY  AND  POLYTHEISM.  233 

Some  scrupulous  and  educated  Christians,  such  as 
Epiphanius  and  Augustine,  had  naturally  set  their  faces 
against  such  a  general  reversion  to  practical  idolatry, 
just  as  many  educated  pagans  had  done  on  philoso- 
phical grounds  ;  and  the  council  of  Elvira  in  the  fourth 
century  condemned  the  admission  of  pictures  into 
churches,  but  without  any  lasting  effect.  In  the 
eighth  century,  when  it  could  no  longer  be  pretended 
that  Christian  images  served  merely  for  edification, 
the  Greek  emperor  Leo  the  Isaurian  began  the  famous 
iconoclastic  movement  in  the  east.  It  is  probable  that 
he  was  influenced  by  Saracen  ideas,  with  which  he 
often  came  in  contact ;  though  it  has  been  held  that 
his  motive  was  mainly  political,  the  local  worship  of 
images  having  weakened  the  central  authority  of  the 
Church.  But  after  some  generations  of  struggle  and 
fluctuation,  despite  the  ready  support  given  to 
iconoclasm  by  many  bishops,  the  throne  reverted  to 
orthodoxy,  and  idolatry  thenceforth  remained  normal 
in  the  Greek  as  in  the  Latin  Church.  The  one  varia- 
tion from  pagan  practice  lay  in  the  substitution  of 
pictures  and  painted  wooden  images  or  icons  for  the 
nobler  statues  of  past  paganism,  with  which  indeed 
Christian  art  could  not  pretend  for  a  moment  to 
compete. 

In  the  west,  though  the  iconoclastic  emperors  met 
from  the  popes  not  sympathy  but  intense  hostility, 
leading  soon  to  the  severance  of  Rome  from  the 
empire,  we  find  in  the  ninth  century  a  remarkable 
opposition  to  image-worship  on  the  part  of  Claudius 
bishop  of  Turin,  and  Agobard  bishop  of  Lyons,  both 
of  whom  show  a  surprising  degree  of  rationalism  for 
their  age.  Claudius  opposed  papal  claims  as  well  as 
saint-worship  and  image-worship,  and  when  condemned 


234  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

by  a  council  of  bishops  called  them  asses ;  and 
Agobard  opposed  all  the  leading  superstitions  of  his 
day,  even  going  so  far  as  to  pronounce  the  theory  of 
plenary  inspiration  an  absurdity.  As  both  men  were 
born  in  Spain  there  is  reason  to  suspect  that  they  like 
Leo  had  been  influenced  by  the  higher  Saracen 
thought  of  the  time.  In  any  case,  their  stand  was 
vain  ;  and  though  the  northern  nations,  mainly  per- 
haps by  reason  of  their  backwardness  in  the  arts,  were 
slow  to  follow  the  Italian  lead,  a  century  or  two  sufficed 
to  make  the  whole  Latin  Church  devoutly  image- 
worshipping.  At  no  time,  of  course,  had  any  part  of 
it  been  otherwise  than  boundlessly  credulous  as  to 
miracles  of  every  order,  and  as  to  the  supernatural 
virtue  of  relics  of  every  species ;  and  both,  accord- 
ingly, abounded  on  all  hands.  The  average  mass  of 
Christendom  was  thus  on  the  same  religious  and 
psychological  plane  as  pagan  polytheism. 

Polytheistic,  strictly  speaking,  Christianity  had 
been  from  the  first,  the  formula  of  the  Trinity  being 
no  more  truly  monotheistic  for  the  new  faith  than  it 
had  been  for  ancient  Egypt ;  and  the  mere  belief  in 
an  Evil  Power  being  a  negation  of  monotheism.  But 
when  saints  came  to  be  prayed  to  at  separate  shrines, 
and  every  trade  had  its  saint-patron,  the  Christian 
system  was  both  theoretically  and  practically  as  poly- 
theistic as  that  of  classic  Greece,  where  Zeus  was  at 
least  as  truly  the  Supreme  God  as  was  the  Father  for 
Christians.  And  in  the  elevation  of  Mary  to  Goddess- 
hood  even  the  formal  semblance  of  monotheism  was 
lost,  for  her  worship  was  in  the  main  absolute.  The 
worship,  indeed,  was  long  established  before  she 
received  technical  divinisation  from  the  Church,  such 
Fathers  as  Epiphanius  and  Augustine  having  too 


GROWTH  OF  IDOLATEY  AND  POLYTHEISM.          235 

flatly  condemned  her  early  worship  to  permit  of  a 
formal  declaration  to  the  contrary.  But  in  the  thir- 
teenth century,  St.  Bonaventura,  who  expressly  main- 
tained that  the  same  reverence  must  be  paid  to  the 
Virgin's  image  as  to  herself — a  doctrine  established  in 
the  same  period  by  Thomas  Aquinas  in  regard  to 
Christ — arranged  a  Psalter  in  which  domina  was  sub- 
stituted for  dominus  (in  te  domina  speravi)  ;  and  this 
became  the  note  of  average  Catholicism.  In  the 
twelfth  century  began  the  dispute  as  to  the  Imma- 
culate Conception  of  the  Virgin — the  doctrine,  that  is, 
of  her  supernatural  birth — on  which  in  later  ages  the 
Dominicans  and  Franciscans  fought  a  bitter  and 
obstinate  battle,  the  latter  affirming  and  the  former 
denying  the  dogma.  After  seven  centuries  of  tempo- 
rising, the  Papacy  has  in  recent  times  endorsed  it 
(1854) ;  but  for  a  thousand  years  it  has  been  implicit 
in  the  ritual  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

It  is  not  generally  known  among  Protestants  that 
the  deification  of  Joseph  has  long  been  in  course  of 
similar  evolution.  In  the  fifteenth  century,  Saint 
Teresa  seems  to  have  regarded  him  as  the  "  plenipo- 
tentiary" of  God  (=  Jesus),  obtaining  from  the  deity 
in  heaven  whatever  he  asked,  as  he  had  done  on  earth 
according  to  the  Apocrypha.  The  cult  has  never  been 
very  prominent ;  but  the  latter-day  litany  of  St. 
Joseph  treats  him  as  at  least  the  equal  of  the  Virgin. 
"  The  devotion  to  him,"  says  Cardinal  Newman,  "  is 
comparatively  of  late  date.  When  once  it  began, 
men  seemed  surprised  that  it  had  not  been  thought  of 
before ;  and  now  they  hold  him  next  to  the  Blessed 
Virgin  in  their  religious  affection  and  veneration." 
It  had  of  course  been  dogmatically  retarded  by  the 
insistence  on  the  virginity  of  Mary.  But  Gerson,  one 


236  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

of  the  most  distinguished  theologians  of  the  four- 
teenth century,  is  credited  by  modern  Catholics  with 
having  suggested  the  recognition  of  a  second  or 
created  Trinity  of  Jesus,  Mary,  and  Joseph.  And 
seeing  that  Joseph  in  the  popular  medieval  represen- 
tations of  the  Advent  Mystery  is  a  constant  figure,  it 
is  inferrible  that  for  the  multitude  he  had  practically 
a  divine  status.  The  process  is  strictly  in  keeping 
with  religious  evolution  in  general ;  and  the  official 
apotheosis  of  Joseph  may  one  day  take  place. 


§  2.  Doctrines  of  the  Eucharist,  Purgatory,  and 
Confession. 

In  the  first  ages  of  the  Church,  the  notion  of  the 
divinity  of  the  "  body  and  blood  "  of  the  communion 
meal  was  vague  and  undefined.  The  partakers  cer- 
tainly regarded  the  consecrated  bread  and  wine  as 
carrying  some  supernatural  virtue,  since  they  took 
away  portions  for  medicinal  use  ;  but  they  thought  of 
the  meal  very  much  as  devout  pagans  thought  of  one 
of  the  same  kind  in  their  mysteries  or  temple  ritual. 
When  their  ritual  phraseology  was  challenged  as 
giving  colour  to  the  charge  of  cannibalism,  the 
Fathers  seem  always  to  have  explained  that  the  terms 
were  purely  figurative  ;  and  such  was  the  doctrine  laid 
down  by  Augustine.  But  when  pagan  culture  had  passed 
away,  and  there  were  none  in  the  barbarised  West  to 
challenge  the  Church  as  such,  the  strange  literalness 
of  the  original  liturgy  set  up  the  stranger  belief  that 
what  was  eaten  in  the  eucharist  was  by  "  transubstan- 
tiation  "  the  actual  flesh  and  blood  of  the  God-Man. 
Where  such  a  belief  was  possible,  it  was  the  special 


THE  EUCHAKIST,  PUKGATORY,  AND  CONFESSION.    237 

interest  of  the  priesthood  to  make  the  affirmation.  A 
stupendous  miracle,  they  claimed,  was  worked  every 
time  the  eucharist  was  administered ;  but  it  was 
worked  through  the  priest.  He  and  he  only  could 
bring  it  about ;  and  thus  the  central  mystery  and 
prodigy  of  the  faith,  the  command  of  its  most  essential 
ministry,  was  a  clerical  monopoly.  The  economic 
and  spiritual  centre  of  gravity  of  the  entire  system 
was  fixed  in  the  priestly  order. 

Under  such  a  dominating  conception,  Christianity 
was  for  the  majority  a  religion  neither  of  faith  nor  of 
works  :  it  was  a  religion  of  sacerdotal  magic.  Not  he 
that  believed,  still  less  he  that  loved  his  neighbour, 
but  he  only  that  received  the  mystic  rite  at  conse- 
crated hands,  was  to  be  saved.  Moral  teaching  there 
might  be,  but  more  than  ever  it  was  supererogatory. 
Already  in  the  fourth  century  the  sacerdotal  quality  of 
the  rite  was  defined  by  the  practice  of  solemnly 
"  elevating  "  the  wine  and  the  hostia  or  sacrifice,  as 
the  bread  was  termed,  before  every  distribution  ;  and 
it  had  become  common  to  administer  it  two  or  three 
times  a  week.  Thus  the  missa  or  Mass,  as  it  had 
come  to  be  termed  (presumably  from  the  formula  of 
dismissal,  lie,  missio  est,  corrupted  into  Missa  cst — 
another  pagan  detail),  had  passed  from  the  status  of 
a  periodical  solemnity  to  that  of  a  frequent  service ;  and 
the  rite  was  developed  by  the  addition  of  chants  and 
responses  till  it  became  the  special  act  of  Christian 
worship.  The  "  symbols  "  were  thus  already  far  on 
the  way  to  be  worshipped  ;  and  at  the  beginning  of 
the  seventh  century  Gregory  the  Great  enacted  that 
the  slightest  irregularities  in  their  use  should  be 
atoned  for  by  penances.  Thus  "  if  a  drop  from  the 
cup  should  fall  on  the  altar,  the  ministering  priest 


238  MEDIEVAL  CHKISTIANITY. 

must  suck  up  the  drop  and  do  penance  for  three  days ; 
and  the  linen  cloth  which  the  drop  touched  must  be 
washed  three  times  over  the  cup,  and  the  water  in 
which  it  is  washed  be  cast  into  the  fire." 

In  various  other  ways  the  traditional  practice  was 
modified.  Originally  a  "  supper,"  it  was  frequently 
partaken  of  after  the  Agapa  or  love  feasts  ;  but  in  the 
fourth  century  the  irrepressible  disorders  of  those 
assemblages  led  to  their  being  officially  dis- 
countenanced, and  they  gradually  died  out.  Soon  the 
Mass  in  the  churches  became  a  regular  morning  rite, 
and  the  eucharist  was  taken  fasting.  After  Leo  the 
Great,  in  the  Roman  services,  it  was  even  administered 
several  times  in  the  day.  Finally,  in  or  before  the 
eleventh  century,  the  priesthood,  from  motives  either 
of  economy  or  of  sobriety,  began  to  withhold  the  wine- 
cup  from  communicants,  and  to  reserve  it  for  the 
priests — a  practice  which  Leo  the  Great  had  de- 
nounced as  heretical.  The  official  argument  seems  to 
have  been  that  "  the  body  must  include  the  blood," 
and  that  the  miracle  which  turned  the  bread  into 
flesh  created  the  divine  blood  therein.  One  of  the 
most  popular  miracle  stories  was  to  the  effect  that 
when  once  a  Jew  stabbed  a  Host,  it  bled ;  and  the 
Host  in  question  was  long  on  exhibition.  Of  older 
date,  apparently,  is  the  administration  of  the  bread  in 
the  form  of  a  wafer,  this  being  admittedly  an  imita- 
tion either  of  the  ancient  pagan  usage  of  consecrating 
and  eating  small  round  cakes  in  the  worship  of  many 
deities,  or  of  the  Jewish  unleavened  bread  of  the 
Passover.  It  may,  indeed,  have  come  through 
Manichseism,  which  at  this  point  followed  Mazdean 
usage  ;  and  as  the  Manichaeans  also  had  the  usage  of 
bread  without  wine,  it  may  be  that  both  practices 


THE  EUCHARIST,  PURGATORY,  AND  CONFESSION.    239 

came  from  them  in  the  medieval  period.     But  as  the 
priestly  practice  of   turning  round  at  the  altar  was 
taken  direct  from  ancient  paganism,  with  the  practice 
of  shaving  the  head,  it  is  likely  that  the  wafer  was  also. 
The  rite  thus  settled  being  a  conditio  sine  qua  non 
of   church  membership  and  spiritual  life,  it  became 
the   basis   of  the   temporal    power    of    the    church. 
Without  it  there  was  no  "  religion  "  ;    and   as   the 
communicant  in  order  to  retain  his  rights  must  make 
confession  to  the  priest  at  least  once  a  year,  the  hold 
of  the  church  on  the  people  was  universal.     Any  one 
rejecting  its  authority  could  be  excommunicated ;  and 
excommunication    meant    the    cessation   of    all    the 
offices  of  social  life,  each  man  being  forced  by  fear 
for  himself  to  stand  aloof  from  the  one  condemned. 
The  obligation  to  confess,  in  turn,  was  an  evolution 
from  the  primitive  practice  of  voluntary  public  con- 
fession of  sin  before  the  church.     When  that  went 
out  of  fashion,  private  confession  to  the  priest  took 
its   place  ;    and   when   the    public   reading   of    such 
confessions  by  the  priest  gave  offence,  Leo  the  Great 
directed    that    they   should   be   regarded    as    secret. 
What  was  thus  made  for  criminals  an  easy  means  to 
absolution  became  at  length  an  obligation  for  all.     In 
the  East,  indeed,  it  seems  to  have  reached  that  stage 
in  the  fifth  century,  when  a  scandal  caused  the  rule  to 
be  given  up,  leaving  to  the  Western  church  its  full 
exploitation.     Sacerdotal  confession,  thus  instituted, 
was   one    more    hint    from   the   book  of    paganism, 
sagaciously     developed.        In     the     ancient     Greek 
mysteries,   priests  had  unobtrusively  traded   on  the 
principle    that    the    initiate    must    be    pure,    first 
inviting  confession  and  then  putting  a  scale  of  prices 
on  ceremonial  absolution  ;  but  in  the  pagan  world  the 


240  MEDIEVAL  CHE1STIANITY. 

system  had  never  gone  far.  It  was  left  to  Roman 
Christianity  to  make  it  coextensive  with  the  Church, 
and  thus  to  create  a  species  of  social  and  economic 
power  over  mankind  which  no  other  religion  ever 
attained. 

But  yet  a  third  hold  over  fear  and  faith  was 
wrought  by  the  priesthood.  Even  as  the  priestly 
saying  of  Masses,  bought  at  a  price,  was  needed  to 
keep  the  Christian  safe  in  life,  so  the  buying  of 
Masses  could  hasten  the  release  of  his  soul  from 
purgatory  after  death.  Purgatory  was,  to  begin  with, 
yet  another  pagan  tenet,  which  in  the  first  five 
centuries  was  regarded  by  the  Church  as  heretical, 
though  the  text  about  "  the  spirits  in  prison " 
(1  Peter  iii.  19  ;  cp.  1  Cor.  v.  5)  gave  colour  to  it, 
and  Origen  had  entertained  it.  In  all  the  writings  of 
Ambrose  it  is  not  mentioned  ;  Augustine  treats  it 
as  dubious  in  despite  of  the  authority  of  Origen  ;  and 
the  Eastern  church  has  never  accepted  the  tenet.  But 
in  the  writings  of  Gregory  the  Great  it  is  treated  as 
an  established  principle,  with  the  economic  corollary 
that  he  who  would  save  himself  or  his  kindred  from 
prolonged  pains  in  purgatory  must  lay  out  money  on 
atoning  Masses.  Thus  the  whole  cycle  of  real  and 
supposed  human  experience  was  under  the  church's 
sway,  and  at  every  stage  on  the  course  the  pilgrim 
paid  toll.  The  episodes  of  birth,  marriage,  and  death 
were  alike  occasions  for  sacraments,  each  a  source  of 
clerical  revenue :  the  fruits  of  the  earth  paid  their 
annual  tithe ;  and  beyond  death  itself  the  church  sold 
privilege  in  the  realm  of  shadows,  winning  by  that 
traffic,  perhaps,  most  wealth  of  all. 

It  was  a  general  corollary  from  the  whole  system 
that  the  Church  had  the  right  to  grant  "  indulgences  " 


THE  EUCHARIST,  PURGATORY,  AND  CONFESSION.  241 

for  sin.  If  the  church  could  release  from  penalties  in 
purgatory,  it  might  grant  pardons  at  will  on  earth. 
Such  a  doctrine  was  of  course  only  very  gradually 
evolved.  First  of  all,  perhaps  again  following  a 
Manichaean  precedent,  the  bishops  individually  began 
to  waive  canonical  penances  in  consideration  of  the 
donation  by  offenders  of  sums  of  money  for  religious 
purposes.  The  principle  is  expressly  laid  down  by 
Gregory  I.  There  was  at  the  outset  no  thought  of 
selling  the  permission  to  commit  an  offence ;  the 
bishop  merely  used  the  opportunity  of  committed 
offences  to  enrich  his  church,  very  much  as  the  law  in 
so  many  cases  inflicts  fines  instead  of  imprisonment. 
The  procedure,  too,  was  local  and  independent,  even 
as  that  of  abbots  and  monks  who  sold  the  privilege  of 
seeing  and  kissing  holy  relics,  which  they  often  carried 
round  the  country  in  procession  for  revenue  purposes. 
Only  after  such  means  of  income  had  long  been  in  use 
did  the  papacy  attempt  to  monopolise  the  former,  in 
virtue  of  its  prerogative  of  "  the  keys."  But  step  by 
step  it  absorbed  the  power  to  release  from  ordinary 
penances  and  to  grant  "  plenary "  remission  from 
penances  ;  and  finally  it  undertook,  what  the  bishops 
had  never  ventured  on,  to  remit  the  penalties  of 
purgatory  in  advance.  Such  enterprise  was  evoked 
only  by  a  great  occasion — the  Crusades. 

The  earlier  papal  indulgences  were  remissions  of 
penance,  and  were  often  given  on  such  tolerable 
grounds  as  pilgrimages  to  the  Holy  Land,  and  loyal 
observance  of  the  papal  institution  of  a  "  Truce  of 
God  "  on  certain  days  of  the  week ;  indeed  one  of  the 
original  motives  may  even  have  been  that  of  con- 
trolling the  mercenary  proceedings  of  bishops.  But 
when  once  the  popes  had  proffered  plenary  indulgence 

R 


242  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

to  all  crusaders,  decency  was  at  an  end.  It  was 
obvious  that  the  effect  was  demoralising  to  the  last 
degree;  and  still  the  practice  continued.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century  Pope  Innocent  III. 
offered  absolution  from  all  sins  past  and  future,  dis- 
pensation from  the  payment  of  interest  on  debts,  and 
exemption  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  ordinary  law 
courts,  to  all  who  would  serve  for  a  given  period  in 
the  crusade  against  the  Albigensian  and  other  heretics 
in  the  territory  of  the  Count  of  Toulouse.  Later, 
similar  inducements  were  offered  to  all  who  would  take 
up  arms  against  the  Moors  in  Spain.  If  the  moral 
sense  of  Christendom  were  not  thus  wholly  destroyed, 
it  is  because  all  social  life  necessitates  some  minimum 
of  morality,  which  no  system  can  uproot. 

Thenceforth  the  practice  went  from  bad  to  worse, 
despite  many  earnest  protests  from  the  better  and 
saner  sort  of  churchmen,  till  it  became  possible  for 
popes  to  allot  the  traffic  in  indulgences  in  given  dis- 
tricts as  kings  allotted  trading  monopolies,  and  the 
enormity  of  the  practices  of  the  agents  gave  a  sufficient 
ground  for  the  decisive  explosion  of  the  Reformation. 
Before  that  explosion  an  attempt  was  made,  on  the 
lines  of  ancient  Roman  law,  to  give  the  practice  plausi- 
bility by  the  formula  that  the  indulgence  was  granted 
"  out  of  the  superfluous  merits  of  Christ  and  the 
saints,"  a  treasure  of  spare  sanctity  which  it  lay  with 
the  Pope  to  distribute.  But  this  doctrine,  which 
savoured  so  much  of  the  counting-house,  was  contem- 
poraneous with  the  worst  abuse  the  principle  ever 
underwent  after  the  age  of  the  Crusaders. 


RATIONALISTIC  HERESIES.  243 


§  3.  Rationalistic  Heresies. 

As  we  have  seen  in  connection  with  the  growth  of 
idolatry,  there  was  even  in  the  Dark  Ages  an  earnest 
minority  within  the  Church  which  resisted  the  down- 
ward bias  of  the  majority  and  of  their  hierarchical 
rulers.  In  no  period,  probably,  was  the  spirit  of 
reason  wholly  absent ;  and  from  time  to  time  it  bore 
distinct  witness.  Thus  we  find  alongside  of  the  effort 
of  Claudius  and  Agobard  against  idolatry  and  extra- 
neous superstitions  a  less  vigorous  but  no  less  remark- 
able testimony  against  the  central  superstition  of  the 
priestly  system.  When  the  Frankish  monk  Paschasius 
Radbert  (831)  put  flatly  what  had  become  the  orthodox 
doctrine  of  Rome  as  to  the  transubstantiation  of  the 
eucharist,  some  of  the  northern  scholars  who  had 
preserved  the  pre-barbaric  tradition  were  found  to 
gainsay  him.  As  the  discussion  continued  long  the 
liberal-minded  Frankish  emperor,  Charles  the  Bald, 
invited  special  replies  ;  and  a  learned  monk,  Ratram- 
nus,  wrote  a  treatise  to  the  effect  that  the  "  real 
presence  "  was  spiritual,  not  corporeal.  But  John  the 
Scot  (then  =  Irishman) ,  otherwise  known  as  Erigena, 
wrote  on  the  same  invitation  to  the  effect  that  the 
bread  and  wine  were  merely  symbols  or  memorials  of 
the  Last  Supper — a  heresy  so  bold  that  only  the 
emperor's  protection  could  have  saved  the  utterer. 
And  his  freethinking  did  not  end  there,  for  in  the 
discussion  on  predestination  begun  by  the  monk 
Gottschalk,  in  which  John  was  invited  to  intervene 
by  the  bigoted  abbot  Hincmar,  the  Irish  scholar  was 
again  recalcitrant  to  authority  ;  while  on  the  question 


244  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

of  Deity  and  Trinity  he  held  a  language  that  antici- 
pated Spinoza,  and  brought  upon  his  memory,  when 
he  was  long  dead,  the  anathema  of  the  papacy. 
Another  Irishman  of  the  same  period,  Macarius  or 
Macaire,  taught  a  similar  pantheism  in  France. 

John  Scotus,  however,  was  by  far  the  greatest 
thinker  of  the  Dark  Ages,  and  it  was  impossible  that 
his  ideas  should  become  normal.  Not  for  two  hundred 
years  was  there  any  overt  result  from  his  and  Rat- 
ramnus's  heresy  on  the  eucharist.  Then  (1045) 
Berengar  of  Tours  set  forth  a  modified  doctrine  of  the 
eucharist  which  rested  on  that  of  Ratramnus,  and 
brought  on  him  a  series  of  prosecutions  at  Rome  for 
heresy,  from  the  punishment  for  which  he  was  saved 
by  Hildebrand,  as  papal  adviser  and  later  as  Pope ; 
but  also  by  his  own  formal  retractations,  to  which 
however  he  did  not  adhere.  The  populace,  he  tells 
us,  would  gladly  have  slain  him ;  and  more  than  once 
he  had  narrow  escapes.  After  all  he  did  but  affirm  a 
"  spiritual  real  presence ";  and  while  some  of  his 
party  went  as  far  as  John  Scotus,  the  stand  for  reason 
was  soon  tacitly  abandoned,  the  great  majority  even 
of  the  educated  class  accepting  the  priestly  dogma. 
Not  till  the  Reformation  was  it  again  firmly  challenged, 
and  even  then  not  by  all  the  reformers. 

A  similar  fortune  attended  the  attempt  of  the 
French  canon  Rousselin  (Roscellinus),  also  in  the 
twelfth  century,  to  rationalise  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity.  Proceeding  logically  as  a  "  Nominalist," 
denying  the  reality  of  abstractions,  he  argued  that  if 
the  Three  Persons  were  one  thing  it  waa  only  a 
nominal  thing.  His  heresy,  however,  admittedly 
ended  in  simple  tritheism ;  and  after  he,  like 
Berengar,  had  on  pressure  recanted,  his  subsequent 


RATIONALISTIC  HERESIES.  245 

withdrawal  of  his  recantation  did  not  revive  excite- 
ment. Not  till  the  sixteenth  century  did  Unitarianism 
assert  itself  against  Trinitarianism,  and  Deism  against 
both.  There  was  indeed  a  great  development  of 
general  rationalism  in  philosophy  in  the  twelfth 
century,  especially  in  France,  as  represented  by 
Abailard  ;  and  even  in  the  eleventh  the  argument  of 
Anselm  to  prove  the  existence  of  God  shows  that  very 
radical  scepticism  had  indirectly  made  itself  heard ; 
but  no  philosophic  movement  affected  the  teachings 
and  practices  of  the  Church  as  such.  As  for  the 
kind  of  rationalism  which  denied  the  immortality  of 
the  soul,  though  it  seems  to  have  been  somewhat 
common  at  Florence  early  in  the  twelfth  century,  it 
never  took  such  propagandist  form  as  to  bring  on  it 
the  assault  of  the  papacy ;  and  the  occasional  philo- 
sophic affirmation  of  the  eternity  of  matter  met  the 
same  immunity.  It  is  remarkable  that,  despite  the 
denunciation  of  all  the  truths  of  ancient  science  by 
the  church,  the  doctrine  of  the  roundness  of  the  earth 
was  still  affirmed  in  the  eighth  century  by  a  priest  of 
Bavaria  named  Virgilius,  who  was  duly  denounced 
for  his  heresy  by  St.  Boniface,  and  excommunicated  by 
the  pope.  Still  the  knowledge  persisted ;  and  though 
in  the  fourteenth  century  Nicolaus  of  Autricuria  was 
compelled  to  recount  his  teaching  of  the  atomistic 
theory,  in  the  fifteenth  his  namesake  of  Cusa  taught 
with  impunity  the  rotation  of  the  earth  on  its  axis, 
being  despite  that  made  a  cardinal ;  while  the  Italian 
poet  Pulci  with  equal  impunity  affirmed  the  existence 
of  an  Antipodes.  Nicolaus  of  Cusa  even  put  forth  the 
doctrine  of  the  infinity  of  the  physical  universe — the 
beginning  of  modern  pantheistic  and  atheistic  philo- 
sophy. 


246  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

As  the  Renaissance  began  to  glimmer,  a  new  source 
of  heresy  can  be  seen  in  the  higher  teaching — heretical 
in  its  own  sphere — of  Saracen  philosophy,  which 
under  Aristotelian  and  Jewish  influences  had  gone 
far  while  Christendom  was  sinking  in  a  deepening 
darkness.  The  effects  of  Saracen  contacts,  acting  on 
minds  perhaps  prepared  by  the  doctrine  of  John 
Scotus,  first  became  obvious  in  the  pantheistic  teach- 
ing of  Amalrich  of  Bena  and  David  Dinant  at  the 
end  of  the  twelfth  century.  Amalrich  was  forced  to 
abjure ;  and  after  his  death  his  bones  were  dug  up 
and  burned  (1209),  and  many  of  his  followers  burned 
alive;  David  of  Dinant  having  to  fly  for  his  life. 
Then  it  was  that  a  Council  held  at  Paris  vetoed  all 
study  of  Aristotle  at  the  university.  Yet  in  1237  the 
veto  was  withdrawn  ;  and  as  Aristotle  became  the 
basis  of  the  systematic  theology  of  Thomas  Aquinas 
(d.  1274),  his  philosophy  was  thenceforth  the  orthodox 
system  in  the  schools.  From  the  first  it  must  have 
counted  for  indirect  scepticism ;  and  in  the  great 
Summa  Tlieolocjice  of  Thomas  himself  are  to  be  seen 
abundant  traces  of  the  new  doubt  of  the  age,  much 
of  it  set  up  by  reflection  on  the  spectacle  of  conflicting 
religious  dogmatisms  in  the  Crusades,  some  of  it  by 
Saracen  philosophy,  especially  that  of  Averroes.  In 
Sicily  and  Southern  Italy,  which  under  Frederick  II. 
were  the  special  seat  of  this  doubt  and  of  the  tendency 
to  tolerance  which  it  generated,  the  spirit  of  reason 
ultimately  fared  ill ;  but  thenceforth  an  element  of 
scepticism  pervades  the  higher  life  of  Europe. 
Saracen  science,  medical,  chemical,  and  astronomical 
— the  virtual  foundation  of  all  the  modern  science  of 
Europe — tended  in  the  same  direction.  In  Italy,  in 
particular,  respect  for  the  church  and  papacy  almost 


ANTI-CLERICAL  HERESIES.  247 

ceased  to  exist  among  educated  men  ;  and  the  revival 
of  such  specific  heresies  as  disbelief  in  immortality 
and  belief  in  the  eternity  of  matter  prepared  the  way 
for  simple  deism. 

But  against  all  such  heresy  the  Church  could  hold 
its  ground  in  virtue  of  its  vast  vested  interests,  as 
well  as  of  the  subjection  of  the  mass,  superstitious 
even  when  irreverent.  The  practical  danger  to  the 
Church's  power  lay  first  in  the  growth  of  anti-clerical 
feeling  among  people  with  religious  instincts,  and 
secondarily  in  the  anti-clerical  economic  interest  of 
the  nobility  and  upper  classes  in  all  the  northern 
countries.  What  delayed  disaster  was  the  slowness  of 
the  two  hostile  elements  to  combine. 


§  4.  Anti-clerical  Heresies. 

The  kind  of  heresy  which  first  roused  the  Church  to 
murderous  repression  was  naturally  that  which  struck 
at  its  monopolies.  After  the  ancient  schism  of  the 
Donatists,  which  so  organised  itself  as  to  set  up  a 
rival  church,  the  sect  which  was  most  bloodily  per- 
secuted in  the  period  of  established  Christianity  from 
Theodosius  onwards  was  the  Manichaean,  visibly  the 
Church's  most  serious  rival.  So,  in  the  dark  ages, 
the  heresies  which  roused  most  priestly  anger  were  the 
movement  against  image-worship  ;  the  predestinarian 
doctrine  of  Gottschalk,  which,  though  orthodox  and 
Augustinian,  was  now  felt  to  undermine  the  priest's 
power  over  souls  in  purgatory ;  and  that  which  im- 
pugned the  priestly  miracle  of  the  eucharist,  the  main 
hold  of  the  priesthood  over  society.  And  the  first 
resort  to  general  and  systematic  massacre  as  against 


248  MEDIEVAL  CHKISTIANITY. 

heresy  in  the  west  was  made  after  there  had  arisen  in 
the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  a  movement  of 
popular  schism  which  assailed  not  only  a  number  of 
leading  rites  and  dogmas,  but  flatly  denied  the  priestly 
prerogative. 

Of  this  movement  the  first  stages  occurred  in  the 
eastern  empire,  in  the  sect  known  as  Paulicians,  who 
are  first  heard  of  under  that  name  in  Armenia  in  the 
seventh  century.  Their  founder  however,  one  Con- 
stantine,  afterwards  known  as  Sylvanus,  worked  on 
existing  bases.  The  name  of  the  sect  seems  to  have 
stood  for  an  appeal  to  Paul  as  against  paganised 
Christianity ;  and  it  had  Marcionite  elements ;  but 
though  it  was  at  first  anti-Gnostic  and  anti-Manichsean, 
it  acquired  both  Gnostic  and  Manichaean  or  at  least 
Mazdean  characteristics,  even  in  the  teaching  of 
Sylvanus.  On  the  face  of  the  case,  it  suggests  both 
Persian  and  Moslem  influences.  Its  practical  heresies 
were  opposition  to  the  adoration  of  images  and  relics, 
to  the  use  of  the  Old  Testament,  to  the  worship  of 
saints,  angels,  and  the  Virgin  ;  and  to  the  prerogatives 
of  monks  and  priests,  the  sectaries  claiming  to  read 
the  New  Testament  for  themselves,  in  defiance  of  the 
virtual  veto  of  the  Greek  Church  on  such  study  by  the 
laity.  For  the  rest,  they  insisted  that  baptism  and 
the  eucharist  were  spiritual  and  not  bodily  rites,  and 
even  reaffirmed  the  "  Docetic  "  doctrine  that  Jesus 
had  not  a  true  human  body,  and  so  was  incapable  of 
suffering.  Their  flat  denial  of  priestly  claims  marked 
them  out  as  a  specially  obnoxious  body,  and  they  were 
fiercely  persecuted,  the  founder  being  stoned  to  death. 

Like  all  the  other  sects,  they  were  in  turn  divided, 
and  one  section  had  the  protection  of  Leo  the  Icono- 
clast, who  agreed  with  them  as  to  images.  A  later 


ANTI-CLERICAL  HERESIES.  249 

leader,  Sergius  or  Tychicus,  won  for  his  sect  the  favour 
of  Nicephorus  I. ;  but  the  next  iconoclast,  Leo  the 
Armenian,  resenting  their  other  heresies,  cruelly  per- 
secuted them  ;  and  like  previous  heretical  sects  they 
were  driven  over  to  the  national  enemy,  which  was 
now  Islam.  Constantine  Copronymus,  seeking  to 
remedy  this  state  of  things,  transplanted  many  of 
them  to  Constantinople  and  Thrace,  thus  bringing 
their  heresy  into  Europe;  but  in  the  ninth  century,  on 
the  final  restoration  of  image-worship,  a  vast  multi- 
tude was  massacred  in  Armenia,  most  of  the  remnant 
going  over  to  the  Saracens,  and  becoming  the  fiercest 
enemies  of  the  empire. 

From  Thrace,  meanwhile,  their  propaganda  spread 
into  Bulgaria,  where  it  prospered,  with  the  help  of 
refugees  from  Armenia.  In  the  tenth  century  they 
were  to  some  extent  favoured  as  a  useful  bulwark 
against  the  Slavs ;  but  in  the  eleventh  they  were  again 
persecuted  ;  and  as  the  malcontents  of  the  empire  in 
general  tended  to  join  them  they  became  the  ruling 
party  in  Bulgaria.  Thus  it  came  about  that  the  name 
Bulgar,  Bulgarian,  became  a  specific  name  in  mid- 
Europe  for  heretic,  surviving  to  this  day  in  that  sense 
in  the  French  form  of  bougre.  The  Paulicians, 
further,  had  their  own  extremists,  who  held  by 
the  old  Marcionite  veto  on  marriage,  and  received 
the  Greek  name  of  cathari,  "  the  pure " — a  title 
sometimes  given  to  the  whole  mass,  from  whom, 
however,  the  purists  were  in  that  case  distinguished 
as  perfccti.  Either  from  the  Cathari  or  from  the 
Chazari,  a  Turkish  tribe  whose  Christianity  in  the 
ninth  century  was  much  mixed  with  Mohammedanism, 
came  the  Italian  nickname  yazzari,  and  the  German 
word  for  heretic,  ketzer.  Yet  another  eastern  sect,  the 


250  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

Slavonic  Bogomilians,  who  remained  monotheistic  as 
against  the  dualism  of  the  Paulicians,  joined  in  the 
wave  of  new  beliefs  which  began  to  beat  from  the  east 
on  central  Europe. 

From  the  very  beginning  of  the  eleventh  century, 
outbreaks  of  the  new  heresy,  always  anti-clerical 
and  anti-ceremonial,  occurred  at  intervals  in  France, 
northern  Italy,  and  Germany.  In  some  cases,  the 
opposition  to  priests,  images,  and  Virgin- worship 
extended  to  a  denial  of  all  miracles  and  sacraments, 
and  an  assertion  of  the  eternity  of  matter — apparent 
signs  of  Saracen  philosophic  influence.  But  the 
movement  developed  a  thoroughness  of  enmity  to 
everything  ecclesiastical,  that  told  of  a  quite  inde- 
pendent basis  in  the  now  widespread  hostility  to  the 
Church  of  Home  outside  of  its  centre  of  wealth  and 
power.  For  one  or  two  generations  the  crusades 
drew  off  the  superfluous  energy  of  Europe,  and  the 
new  heresies  were  somewhat  overshadowed  ;  but  in 
the  first  half  of  the  twelfth  century,  when  the  crusades 
had  lost  all  religious  savour,  anti-clericalism  sprang 
up  on  all  hands.  Tanquelin  in  Flanders  ;  Peter  de 
Brueys  (founder  of  the  Petrobrussians)  in  Languedoc ; 
the  monk  Henry  in  Switzerland  and  France  ;  Eudo  of 
Stello  in  Brittany,  and  Arnold  of  Brescia  in  Italy,  all 
wrought  either  religiously  or  politically  against  the 
Church ;  and  all  died  by  her  violence,  or  in  prison. 
Arnold,  the  most  capable  of  all,  was  a  pupil  of 
Abailard,  and  his  doctrine  was  that  the  entire  vested 
wealth  of  the  Church  should  be  taken  over  by  the 
civil  power,  leaving  the  clergy  to  live  sparingly  by  the 
gifts  of  the  faithful.  His  movement,  which  lasted 
twenty  years,  and  was  very  strong  in  Lombardy,  went 
so  far  as  to  set  up  a  short-lived  republic  in  Rome ; 


ANTI-CLERICAL  HERESIES.  251 

but  it  needed  only  a  combination  of  the  pope  and  the 
emperor,  Frederick  Barbarossa,  to  bring  the  republic 
to  the  ground,  and  Arnold  to  crucifixion. 

Among  the  other  revolters  there  was  a  good  deal  of 
fanaticism  ;  but  all  were  more  or  less  emphatic  in 
denouncing  priestly  pretensions,  sacraments,  cross- 
worship,  prayers  for  the  dead,  penance,  image-worship, 
church  bells,  altars,  and  even  churches.  It  seemed  as 
if  the  end  of  the  Church  had  begun.  For,  though  each 
new  prophet  in  turn  was  slain,  new  heretics  seemed  to 
rise  from  the  ashes.  With  various  positive  tenets, 
they  were  at  one  in  their  enmity  to  the  priesthood. 
In  Italy  there  nourished  a  sect  called  the  Pasagini 
(apparently  =  Passac/ieri,  Crusaders)  or  the  Circum- 
cised, who  returned  to  the  law  of  Moses  and  to 
Ebionite  views  of  Jesus ;  in  France,  a  different  order 
of  zealots,  called  Caputiati  from  the  habit  of  carrying 
an  image  of  the  Virgin  on  their  hats,  stood  for  a 
return  to  primeval  equality  and  liberty.  Between 
such  types  of  heresy  stood  the  Apostolici,  mostly 
poor  working-folk,  but  with  powerful  sympathisers, 
who  urged  a  return  to  the  "  apostolic  "  ideal  of  poverty 
and  simplicity,  and  further  discouraged  marriage, 
calling  themselves  "the  chaste  brethren  and  sisters." 
Two  of  their  leaders,  Sagarelli  and  Fra  Dolcino,  had 
shown  the  usual  aversion  to  the  Church,  Dolcino 
predicting  the  formation  of  native  States  and  the 
purification  of  the  Papacy  ;  so  they,  too,  were  put  to 
death,  being  burnt  at  the  stake.  And  still  new 
revolters  appeared. 

At  this  stage  there  came  to  the  front  the  sectaries 
known  in  history  as  the  Vaudois  or  Waldenses,  a 
name  standing  properly  for  the  inhabitants  of  the 
Vaux  or  Valleys  of  Piedmont,  but  further  connected 


252  MEDIEVAL  CHBISTIANITY. 

with  the  teaching  of  one  Peter  Waldus,  a  Lyons 
merchant,  whose  followers  received  also  the  name  of 
the  Poor  Men  of  Lyons.  How  far  the  anti-Catholic 
tenets  of  the  Waldenses  derive  from  ancient  heresy 
is  uncertain ;  but  it  is  clear  that  late  in  the  twelfth 
century  they  were  acted  on  by  the  immense  ferment 
of  new  ideas  around  them.  Like  the  Paulicians,  they 
insisted  that  the  laity  should  read  the  Bible  for  them- 
selves ;  and  their  men  and  women  members  went 
about  preaching  wherever  they  could  get  a  hearing, 
and  administering  the  eucharist  without  priestly 
sanction.  At  the  same  time  they  condemned  tithes, 
opposed  fasting  and  prayers  for  the  dead,  preached 
peace  and  non-resistance,  denied  the  authority  of  the 
Pope,  and  impeached  the  lives  of  the  clergy. 

All  of  these  forces  of  heresy,  and  yet  others,  were 
specially  at  work  in  the  rich  and  prosperous  region 
of  Languedoc,  the  patrimony  of  Count  Raymond  of 
Toulouse.  Paulicians  and  Waldenses,  Cathari,  Alba- 
nensians  or  sectaries  of  Albano,  Albigensians  or 
sectaries  of  the  town  of  Alby  or  the  district  of 
Albigensium,  Bogomilians,  Apostolici,  Caputiati, 
and  nondescript  Paterini  (a  Milanese  name  for  a 
popular  faction) — all  were  active  in  the  name  of 
religion  ;  and  in  addition  there  were  at  work  heretics 
of  another  stamp — the  gay,  wandering  Goliards  or 
satirical  poets  and  minstrels,  who  loved  the  priests 
and  the  papacy  as  little  as  did  the  zealots ;  and  the 
graver  doubters  who  had  got  new  views  of  life  from 
Saracen  science  and  philosophy.  As  against  the 
whole  amorphous  mass  of  misbelief,  the  Papacy 
planned  and  effected  a  stupendous  crusade  of  slaughter. 

From  the  first  the  Manichteans,  as  the  church  loved 
to  call  the  heretics  indiscriminately,  had  been  bloodily 


ANTI-CLERICAL  HERESIES.  253 

punished.  One  bishop  of  the  eleventh  century,  Wazon 
of  Liege,  is  to  be  remembered  as  having  protested 
against  the  universal  policy  of  slaughter  ;  and  another, 
Gerhard  of  Cambrai  and  Arras,  is  said  to  have  won 
over  some  heretics  by  persuasion ;  but  these  were 
voices  in  the  wilderness.  Fire,  sword,  halter,  and 
cross  were  the  normal  methods  of  repression  ;  and 
during  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  thousands 
probably  so  perished.  But  the  campaign  which  came 
to  be  known  as  the  Albigensian  crusade  was  planned 
by  Pope  Innocent  III.  to  outdo  all  the  isolated  punish- 
ments of  the  past,  and  it  succeeded.  Grounds  for 
quarrel  with  the  Count  of  Toulouse  were  easily  found  ; 
and  the  offer  of  indulgences,  on  the  lines  laid  down  in 
the  crusades  against  the  Saracens,  brought  eager 
volunteers  from  all  parts  of  Europe,  for  only  forty 
days'  service  was  now  called  for.  The  submission  of 
Count  Kaymond  was  not  permitted  to  check  the 
massacre  of  his  subjects.  It  was  in  the  first  campaign 
that  the  papal  legate  Arnold,  abbot  of  Cliteaux,  when 
asked  at  the  storming  of  Beziers  how  the  heretics 
were  to  be  distinguished  from  the  true  believers,  gave 
the  historic  answer,  "  Kill  all ;  God  will  know."  By 
his  own  account  they  killed  in  that  one  place  fifteen 
thousand  men,  women,  and  children.  The  chroniclers, 
who  make  the  slain  twice  or  thrice  as  many,  tell  how 
seven  thousand  of  them  were  found  in  the  great  church 
of  Mary  the  Magdalene — her  from  whom,  in  the  legend, 
had  been  cast  out  seven  devils  without  letting  of  blood. 
Begun  in  1209,  the  Albigensian  crusades  outlasted 
the  life  of  Innocent  III.,  who  grew  sick  of  the 
slaughter  while  the  priesthood  were  calling  for  its  exten- 
sion. They  praised  in  particular  the  Anglo-French 
Simon  de  Montfort,  who  slew  many  of  his  victims  by 


254  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

torture,  and  tore  out  the  eyes  of  many  more.  For  nearly 
twenty  years  the  wars  lasted,  plunder  being  a  sufficient 
motive  after  heresy  had  been  drowned  in  blood  or 
driven  broadcast  throughout  Europe.  It  has  been 
reckoned  that  a  full  million  of  all  ages  and  both  sexes 
were  slain.  Yet  as  late  as  1231  Pope  Gregory  IX.  was 
burning  troops  of  the  heretics  at  Rome,  and  causing 
many  more  to  be  burned  in  France  and  Germany. 

The  precocious  civilisation  of  Languedoc  and 
Provence  was  destroyed,  and  the  region  became  a 
stronghold  of  Catholic  fanaticism ;  but  the  political 
diversity  of  Europe  baffled  the  papal  hope  of  destroying 
heresy.  Thenceforth  the  anti-clerical  animus  never  died 
out :  in  the  course  of  the  thirteenth  century  it  reached 
even  England,  then  the  most  docile  section  of  the 
Catholic  fold.  Generations  before  Wiclif,  there  were 
heretics  in  the  province  of  Canterbury  who  denied  the 
authority  of  the  Pope  and  even  of  the  Fathers,  pro- 
fessing to  stand  solely  on  the  Bible  and  the  principle 
of  "  necessary  reason."  Wiclif  stood  on  a  less  hetero- 
dox plane,  impugning  chiefly  the  extreme  form  of 
transubstantiation  and  the  practices  of  the  begging 
friars ;  and  he  was  proportionately  influential.  In 
the  fourteenth  century,  when  international  crusades 
of  repression  had  become  politically  impossible,  the 
critical  spirit  is  seen  freshly  at  work  on  anti-papal 
lines  in  England,  Flanders,  France,  Germany,  and 
Bohemia,  as  well  as  in  Italy  ;  and  again  the  more 
energetic  began  in  their  earnest  ignorance  to  frame 
new  schemes  of  life  in  the  light  of  their  sacred  books. 
The  lapse  of  time  and  the  continuance  of  orthodox 
culture  had  made  an  end  of  the  old  Paulician  heresy 
as  such  ;  and  of  the  new  movements  many,  like  that 
set  up  by  Saint  Francis  in  the  period  of  the  Albigensian 


ANTI-CLERICAL  HERESIES.  255 

crusades,  were  meant  to  be  strictly  obedient  to 
the  Church.  Such  were  the  "Brethren  of  the  Common 
Lot,"  a  body  set  up  in  Holland  by  educated  Church- 
men after  the  so-called  Beghards  (otherwise  Beguins 
or  Beguttae)  had  there  for  a  time  flourished  and 
degenerated.  But  the  Beghards  and  the  "Brethren 
of  the  Free  Spirit,"  who  spread  widely  over  northern 
Europe,  had  not  only  aimed  at  a  communal  life,  but 
developed  the  old  tendency  to  pantheism,  now  gain- 
ing ground  philosophically  on  the  lines  of  Averroism. 
Even  among  the  Franciscans  the  "  Spirituals,"  who 
resented  the  falling  away  of  the  order  from  its  ideals 
of  poverty,  became  heretical.  Some  adopted  the  new 
"  Eternal  Gospel,"  by  Abbot  Joachim  of  Flora  in 
Calabria,  in  which  it  was  declared  that  there  now 
began  a  new  dispensation  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  super- 
seding that  of  Jesus.  Others,  called  the  Fraticelli,  or 
Little  Brothers,  had  a  "  Gospel  of  the  Holy  Spirit," 
composed  by  John  of  Parma.  In  both  cases  the  spirit 
of  revolt  against  the  Church  was  marked. 

Of  the  heresy  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  high- 
water  mark  is  seen  in  English  Lollardism,  which, 
without  touching  on  the  philosophical  problem,  pro- 
ceeded on  the  basis  of  the  teaching  of  Wiclif  to  a  kind 
of  religious  rationalism  which  not  only  repudiated  the 
rule  of  the  Pope  but  rejected  the  institutions  of 
religious  celibacy,  exorcisms,  priestly  benedictions, 
confession  and  absolution,  pilgrimages,  masses  for  the 
dead,  and  prayers  and  offerings  to  images ;  and  even 
carried  the  ethical  spirit  to  the  point  of  denouncing 
war  and  capital  punishment.  In  that  age,  such  an 
ethic  could  not  long  thrive.  Lollardism,  encouraged 
by  the  self -seeking  nobility  while  it  menaced  only  the 
wealth  of  the  church,  which  they  hoped  to  gain,  was 


256  MEDIEVAL  CHBISTIANITY. 

trodden  down  by  them  in  conjunction  with  the  king 
and  the  church  when  it  turned  against  the  abuses  of 
feudal  government.  But  its  destruction  was  most 
effectually  wrought  through  the  national  demoralisa- 
tion set  up  by  the  new  imperialism  of  Henry  V.,  who, 
after  passing  a  new  statute  for  the  burning  of  heretics, 
won  the  enthusiastic  loyalty  of  his  people  by  his  suc- 
cessful invasion  of  France.  In  the  corruption  of  that 
policy  of  plunder,  and  in  the  ensuing  pandemonium  of 
the  Wars  of  the  Hoses,  Lollardism  disappeared  like 
every  other  moral  ideal.  The  time  for  a  union  of 
critical  and  rapacious  forces  against  the  hierarchy  was 
not  yet ;  and  when  it  came  in  the  sixteenth  century 
the  critical  spirit  was  on  the  whole  less  rational  than 
it  had  been  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE    SOCIAL    LIFE    AND    STRUCTURE. 

§  1.  The  Clergy,  Regular  and  Secular. 

IN  a  world  so  completely  under  priestly  rule,  the 
character  of  the  priest  was  in  general  the  image  of 
his  influence.  Whatever  good  organised  Christianity 
did  was  in  virtue  of  the  personal  work  of  good  men 
in  holy  orders  ;  and  it  is  comforting  to  believe  that 
in  all  countries  and  in  all  ages  there  were  some 
such,  after  the  fashion  of  the  "parson"  in  Chaucer. 
To  such  men,  the  priestly  status  might  give  a  special 
power  for  righteousness.  But  seeing  that  in  the 
average  man  righteousness  is  in  the  ratio  of  reflection 
on  knowledge,  there  is  no  escape  from  the  conclusion 
that  in  the  middle  ages  most  priests  were  poor  moral 
forces.  For  their  general  ignorance  is  beyond  doubt. 
The  number  who  in  a  given  district  at  a  given  time 
were  unable  to  read  Latin  may  be  a  matter  for  dis- 
pute; but  it  is  clear  that  what  they  did  read  was 
as  a  rule  merely  distilled  ignorance.  And  if  we 
turn  to  the  records  of  ecclesiastical  legislation,  we 
find  constant  evidence,  for  many  centuries,  of  the 
laxity  of  priestly  life  in  all  grades. 

To  say  nothing  of  the  perpetual  scandal  about  con- 
cubinage— an  artificial  form  of  sin,  in  itself  no  more 
decisive  against  a  priest's  character  than  celibacy  in 
its  favour — there  is  in  the  canons  of  the  councils  a 

257  s 


258  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

most  significant  repetition  of  vetoes  on  various  lines 
of  conduct  which  stand  for  a  lack  of  single-minded- 
ness,  and  of  serious  interest  in  moral  tasks.  Century 
after  century,  the  bishops  are  found  forbidding  the 
clergy  to  tell  fortunes,  to  practise  magic,  to  get 
drunk,  to  commit  perjury,  to  take  usury,  to  swear, 
and  to  haunt  taverns,  as  well  as  to  keep  concu- 
bines. At  the  same  time  many  of  the  bishops 
themselves  had  to  be  perpetually  admonished.  Under 
Justinian  we  hear  of  two  eastern  bishops  convicted  of 
unnatural  vice,  and — the  law  as  usual  exceeding  the 
crime — punished  by  mutilation.  Throughout  the 
middle  ages,  as  to-day,  the  normal  complaints  against 
bishops  are  on  the  score  of  avarice,  luxury,  and 
worldliness ;  but  drunkenness  is  not  unheard  of ;  and 
whatever  might  be  said  in  councils  as  to  concubinage, 
it  was  certain  that  bishops  took  at  least  as  much  liberty 
of  life  as  popes  and  presbyters.  So  far  as  moral 
example  went,  then,  the  social  influence  of  the  priest- 
hood was  mostly  on  the  wrong  side,  since  its  normal 
concubinage  was  a  perpetual  lesson  in  hypocrisy. 

On  this  side,  doubtless,  the  priests  were  no  worse 
than  other  men  ;  the  trouble  was  that  they  set  up  to 
be  better,  and  that  the  hierarchy  was  always  seeking  to 
keep  up  the  repute  of  clerical  sanctity  by  a  claim 
to  asceticism  rather  than  by  social  beneficence. 
Thus  they  put  it  in  the  power  of  the  "average 
sensual  man  "  to  convict  of  moral  imposture  a  priest- 
hood which,  if  free  to  marry,  would  have  been  much 
less  vulnerable ;  and  by  constantly  stressing  self- 
denial  on  a  wrong  line  they  missed  promoting  self- 
control  on  right  lines.  The  primary  social  needs  of 
the  middle  ages  were  peace,  civism,  and  cleanliness  ; 
and  for  none  of  these  things  did  clerical  teaching  in 


THE  CLERGY,  REGULAR  AND  SECULAR.     259 

general  avail.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  in  effect 
hostile  to  all  three,  since  it  made  virtue  consist  in 
a  right  relation  to  the  other  world  rather  than  to 
this,  made  religion  a  special  ground  for  warfare,  and 
made  uncleanliness  a  meritorious  form  of  "  self- 
mortification,"  which  in  the  middle  ages  was  the 
last  thing  that  could  be  truly  said  of  it. 

It  is  not  to  be  forgotten,  indeed,  that  among  the 
monks  or  other  clerical  scholars  of  the  Dark  Ages  was 
to  be  found  most  of  what  learning  and  philosophy 
survived.  The  reason  was  that  men  and  youths  with 
the  studious  instinct,  averse  to  the  brawling  life 
around  them,  turned  to  the  monasteries  and  monastic 
schools  as  their  one  refuge.  But  sloth  and  impotence 
equally  turned  thither ;  and  when  the  stronger  spirits 
could  find  a  peaceful  and  useful  life  without,  the 
sluggards  stayed.  Monasteries  were  thus  always  half 
filled  with  men  to  whom  their  vows  were  irksome;  and 
as  women  were  at  the  same  time  frequently  sent  to 
convents  against  their  will,  nothing  but  an  iron 
discipline  could  keep  the  professed  order.  Given  an 
easy  abbot  or  abbess,  they  became  centres  of  scandal  ; 
and  in  the  average  they  were  homes  of  fairly  well- 
fed  idleness.  But  the  full  fatality  of  the  case  is  seen 
only  when  we  realise  that  their  very  successes,  their 
provision  of  a  dim  retreat  for  many  men  and  women 
of  refined  and  unworldly  type,  worsened  society  by 
leaving  the  reproduction  of  the  race  to  the  grosser  and 
harder  natures. 

The  ostensible  merit  of  monasteries,  in  the  medieval 
period,  was  their  almsgiving.  Without  endorsing  the 
mercantilist  impeachment  of  all  such  action,  we  are 
forced  to  recognise  that  theirs  demoralised  as  many  as 
it  relieved.  Of  a  higher  order  than  mere  almsgiving, 


2GO  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

certainly,  was  the  earlier  self-sacrificing  service  of  the 
mendicant  orders  of  friars,  whose  rise  is  one  of  the 
great  moral  phenomena  of  the  middle  ages.  For  a 
time,  in  the  thirteenth  century,  the  order  of  St. 
Francis  in  particular  not  only  organised  but  greatly 
stimulated  human  devotion  of  the  kind  that,  happily, 
is  always  quietly  present  somewhere  ;  and  the  contrast 
between  the  humble  beneficence  of  the  earlier  friars 
and  the  sleek  self-seeking  of  the  average  secular 
priest  at  once  accredited  the  former  and  discredited 
the  latter.  But  the  history  of  the  mendicant  friars 
as  of  the  previous  orders  is  a  crowning  proof  of  the 
impossibility  of  bettering  society  on  a  mere  religious 
impulse,  without  social  science. 

Credit  for  holiness  brought  large  gifts  and  legacies 
from  well-meaning  but  ill- judging  laymen  and  women  ; 
and  nothing  could  prevent  the  enrichment  of  orders 
which  had  begun  under  special  vows  of  poverty. 
Francis  had  expressly  ruled  that  his  friars  should 
not  on  any  pretext  hold  property,  and  should  not 
even  be  able  to  profit  by  it  through  trustees  ;  but 
the  latter  provision  was  annulled,  and  ere  long 
the  order  was  as  well  provided  for  as  any.  The 
better  the  financial  footing,  the  more  self-seekers 
entered  ;  and  these  overruled  the  more  single-minded. 
This  was  the  law  of  development  of  every  "  self- 
denying"  order  of  the  Dark  and  Middle  ages,  from 
the  Benedictine  monks  to  the  Knights  Templars. 
One  of  the  most  rigorously  planned  monasteries  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  that  of  the  lonely  Chartreuse,  founded 
by  St.  Bruno  late  in  the  eleventh  century,  at  length 
relaxed  its  austerities,  and  is  to-day  known  as  a 
wholesale  manufactory  of  a  liqueur — the  distinction 
by  which  most  men  now  know  also  the  name  of  the 


THE  CLERGY,  REGULAR  AND  SECULAR.  261 

Benedictines.  In  the  end,  the  orders  of  monks  and 
friars  did  something  for  scholarship  and  education,  after 
the  institution  of  "  lay  brothers,"  who  did  the  menial 
work,  left  the  donrini  in  certain  orders,  especially 
the  Benedictine,  free  to  devote  themselves  to  learning; 
but  socially  they  achieved  nothing.  When  once  they 
had  acquired  "  foundations  "  they  became  plunderers 
instead  of  helpers  of  the  poor,  exacting  from  them 
gifts,  selling  them  post-mortem  privileges,  taking  the 
widow's  mite  and  the  orphan's  blanket  for  verbal 
blessings. 

It  is  always  to  be  remembered,  here  as  before,  that 
Christianity  is  not  the  efficient  cause  of  the  failures 
or  the  evils  which  happen  under  its  auspices :  we  are 
not  to  suppose  that  had  Osirianism  or  Judaism  or 
Manichaeism  or  Mithraism  chanced  to  be  the  religion 
of  Europe  these  failures  and  evils  would  have  been 
averted.  What  we  are  to  realise  is,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  the  conventional  view  as  to  Christianity  having 
been  an  abnormally  efficient  cause  for  good  is  a 
delusion.  It  is  not  Christianity  that  has  civilised 
Europe,  but  Europe — the  complex  of  political  and 
culture  forces — that  has  civilised  Christianity.  Byzan- 
tium and  Abyssinia  show  what  the  religious  system  could 
amount  to  of  itself.  Western  Europe  surpassed  these 
States  in  virtue  of  conditions  more  propitious  to 
energy  and  to  freedom  :  that  was  the  difference.  At 
the  best,  medieval  Europe  was  a  world  of  chronic 
strife,  daily  injustice,  normal  cruelty,  abundant 
misery,  and  ever-present  disease.  To  show  that 
Christianity,  that  is,  the  holding  of  the  Christian 
creed  by  the  men  of  that  world,  made  these  evils  less 
than  they  would  have  been  in  the  same  place  under 
any  other  creed,  is  impossible.  On  the  other  hand,  it 


262  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

is  clear  that  the  influence  of  Christian  doctrine  and 
tradition  was  on  some  sides  conservative  of  evil  and 
obstructive  of  good. 

Those  tendencies  may  indeed  be  regarded  as 
operating  in  the  intellectual  life,  which,  though  it  is 
in  reality  only  a  side  of  the  sociological  whole,  we 
shall  conveniently  consider  apart.  Under  that  head 
too  we  shall  note  the  influence  of  the  Church  for 
culture  on  the  side  of  art.  But  on  the  side  of  ordinary 
life  the  influence  of  the  clergy  as  teachers  had  two 
specific  tendencies  which  may  here  be  noted.  One 
was  the  disparagement  of  women;  the  other  the 
encouragement  of  cruelty. 

On  the  first  head,  as  on  so  many  others,  the  con- 
ventional view  is  a  fallacy.  That  Christianity  raised 
the  status  of  women  is  still  a  general  assumption  ;  but 
exact  research,  even  when  made  by  an  orthodox  theo- 
logian, proves  the  contrary.  Down  to  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  solidest  rights  women  possessed  were 
those  secured  to  them  by  ancient  Roman  law ;  and 
the  tendency  of  Christian  legislation  was  certainly  to 
restrict  rather  than  to  expand  such  rights.  At  the 
same  time  the  so-called  "  Manichsean "  element  in 
gospel  Christianity,  the  tendency  to  regard  the  sexual 
instinct  as  something  corrupt  and  unclean,  gave  to  the 
ordinary  language  of  the  Fathers  concerning  women  a 
tone  of  detraction  and  aversion.  The  one  remedy  for 
an  overpoise  of  the  sexual  element  in  life,  and  for 
over-emphasis  of  female  function  on  that  side,  is  to 
secure  the  community  of  the  sexes  in  the  intel- 
lectual life ;  and  organised  Christianity,  instead  of 
inculcating  this,  minimised  the  intellectual  life  all 
round,  thus  making  self-restraint  a  matter  of  morbid 
asceticism  as  against  the  excess  inevitably  following 


THE  CLERGY,  REGULAR  AND  SECULAR.  263 

on  disuse  of  mind.  In  particular,  a  priesthood 
nominally  committed  to  celibacy,  yet  always  practising 
in  the  confessional  a  morbid  inquisition  into  sexual 
matters,  was  committed  to  treating  women  dispara- 
gingly as  forces  of  "  temptation  "  when  it  was  not 
yielding  thereto.  Nothing  could  be  more  injurious  to 
women's  real  credit.  It  is  true  that  the  worship  of  the 
Virgin  would  in  some  measure  counteract  the  dis- 
credit ;  but  this  held  equally  true  of  the  worship  of 
many  pagan  Goddesses ;  and  there  is  nothing  to  show 
that  the  status  of  women  was  higher  in  medieval 
Christendom  than  in  ancient  Egypt.  Among  the 
Teutons,  the  moral  status  of  women  seems  to  have 
been  greatly  lowered  by  the  introduction  of  Chris- 
tianity. 

As  regards  cruelty,  the  evidence  is  only  too  abun- 
dant. Mosheim  admits  that  in  the  Crusades  the 
Christians  were  more  ferocious  than  the  Saracens.  In 
the  old  burg  of  Nuremberg  there  is  preserved  a  collec- 
tion (sometimes  exhibited  elsewhere)  of  the  instruments 
of  torture  in  common  use  down  to  the  age  of  the 
Reformation.  It  is  an  arsenal  of  horror.  Such 
engines  of  atrocity  were  the  normal  punitive  expe- 
dients of  a  world  in  which  the  image  of  the  Saviour 
on  the  cross  was  supposed  to  move  men  to  compassion 
and  contrition  ;  and  in  which  that  Saviour's  death  was 
held  to  redeem  men  from  the  penalties  of  their  sins. 
Here  the  practical  teaching  and  example  of  the  priest- 
hood was  all  for  cruelty.  They  presided  or  assisted 
when  the  heretic  was  racked  or  burned  alive  ;  and 
their  whole  conception  of  morals  made  for  such 
methods.  Holding  the  madman  as  possessed  by  a 
devil,  they  taught  that  he  should  be  cruelly  scourged  : 
holding  that  the  leper  was  stricken  by  God  for  sin, 


264  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

they   taught   that   he  should   be  shunned  the  more. 
Paganism  was  saner. 

Nothing  is  more  true  in  social  psychology  than  the 
hard  saying  of  Feuerbach,  that  "  only  where  reason 
rules,  does  universal  love  rule  :  reason  is  itself  nothing 
else  than  universal  love.  It  was  faith,  not  love,  not 
reason,  that  invented  Hell."  "  Faith  has  within  it  a 
malignant  principle."  Medieval  Christendom  is  the 
demonstration.  In  that  age  the  spirit  of  reason  was 
but  occasionally  glimpsed.  It  is  seen  in  the  teaching 
of  John  Scotus,  who,  besides  his  concrete  heresy  on 
the  eucharist,  held  the  all-embracing  heresy  that 
authority  is  derivable  solely  from  reason,  and  from 
his  pantheism  deduced  the  conviction  that  the  doctrine 
of  hell  is  but  an  allegory,  the  actuality  of  which  would 
be  the  negation  of  divine  goodness.  But  such  teaching 
belonged  rather  to  pagan  philosophy  than  to  Chris- 
tian faith,  and  was  anathematised  accordingly.  It 
never  reached  even  the  scholarly  class  in  general ; 
and  specifically  Christian  teaching  which  aimed  at 
softening  the  heart  was  spread  abroad  to  little  purpose. 


§  2.  The  Higher  Theology  and  its  Effects. 

There  is  something  saddening,  though  not  really 
strange,  in  the  failure  even  of  the  most  attractive 
elements  in  medieval  Christianity  to  better  the  world. 
To  read  of  the  life  and  teaching  of  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi  is  to  come  as  it  were  in  the  presence  of  a  really 
elemental  force  of  goodness.  His  namesake  of  Sales 
was  a  persecutor ;  but  the  founder  of  the  Franciscan 
order  seems  free  of  that  taint.  In  him  the  ecstasy  of 
pietism  seems  purified  of  that  correlative  of  fanatic 


THE  HIGHER  THEOLOGY  AND  ITS  EFFECTS.         265 

malignity  which  so  constantly  dogs  it  in  the  literature 
of  ancient  Christianity,  from  the  epistles  of  Paul  to 
the  treatises  of  Augustine.  We  hear  of  his  love  for 
all  animals,  his  seldom-failing  goodwill  to  men,  and 
his  sweet  contentment  in  humble  contemplation.  Yet 
when  we  study  him  in  relation  to  his  age  there  fronts 
us  the  startling  fact  that  while  his  active  career  is 
almost  exactly  synchronous  with  the  horrible  Albi- 
gensian  crusades,  there  is  no  trace  in  the  records  that 
he  was  even  saddened  by  them.  They  ought  to  have 
darkened  for  him  the  light  of  the  sun  ;  but  not  once 
does  he  seem  to  have  given  even  a  deprecating  testi- 
mony against  them.  In  him,  the  flower  of  medieval 
Christianity,  loyalty  to  the  faith  seems  to  have 
annulled  some  of  the  most  vital  modes  of  moral  con- 
sciousness. 

So  again  with  the  influence  of  such  a  religious 
classic  as  the  Imitatio  Christi,  attributed  to  Thomas  a 
Kempis,  but  probably  the  work  of  several  hands,  in 
different  countries  and  centuries.  Many  men  and 
women  must  have  supposed  themselves  to  live  by  it ; 
and  its  influence  seems  wholly  for  peace  and  self- 
surrender.  Yet  it  would  be  hard  to  show  that  it  ever 
restrained  any  corporate  tendency  of  a  contrary  kind, 
or  ruled  the  corporate  life  of  a  single  religious  sect. 
The  truth  is  that  its  message  was  for  a  life  of  isola- 
tion, as  that  of  the  ideal  monk  in  his  cell.  Seclu- 
sion and  not  social  life,  mystic  contemplation  and  not 
wise  activity,  duty  to  God  and  not  duty  to  man,  are  its 
ideals.  It  was  in  a  manner  the  Christian  counterpart 
of  the  Meditations  of  Marcus  Aurelius  or  the  Enchiri- 
dion of  Epictetus — a  manual  of  the  higher  or  inner 
life,  making  Christianity  do  for  medieval  men  what 
Stoicism  could  do  for  pagans  in  the  decadent  Roman 


266  MEDIEVAL  CHKISTIANITY. 

empire.  But  Stoicism,  by  Christian  consent,  made 
for  good  government;  and  there  is  no  trace  of  any 
such  result  from  the  Imitatio.  The  model  Christian 
monarch,  St.  Louis  of  France,  lived  in  an  earlier  age ; 
and  even  he  was  a  fanatic  where  heresy  was  con- 
cerned, and  a  promoter  of  religious  wars. 

The  same  fatality  appears,  again,  when  we  turn  to 
the  mystical  theology  of  the  German  fourteenth- 
century  school  of  Tauler  and  Eckhart,  in  which  both 
Luther  and  some  of  our  own  day  see  a  high  inspira- 
tion. Here,  perhaps,  we  come  on  the  secret  of  the 
failure  we  are  considering.  Eckhart  was  a  scholar, 
who  had  studied  and  taught  at  Paris,  and  ranked  as 
"  provincial  "  of  the  Dominican  order  for  Saxony;  and 
Tauler  was  his  pupil  before  settling  at  Basle.  Both 
men  undoubtedly  influenced  the  Brethren  of  the  Free 
Spirit  and  others  of  the  so-called  Beghards  and 
Beguins,  before  mentioned,  in  particular  the  sect 
who  called  themselves  the  "Friends  of  God";  and 
they  may  so  be  said  to  have  affected  society  practically, 
since  these  movements  aimed  at  a  species  of  com- 
munism. But  the  essence  of  their  theology  was  alien 
to  that  or  any  organised  movement,  and  if  lived  up 
to  would  have  dissolved  it  without  the  interference 
of  the  priests  and  others  who  under  authority  drove 
women  of  the  Beguine  movement  from  their  homes 
and  seized  their  poor  goods.  "  If  thou  wouldst 
have  the  Creator,"  says  Tauler,  "  thou  must  forego 
the  creature.  The  less  of  the  creature,  the  more  of 
God.  Therefore  abjure  all  creatures,  with  all  their 
consolations."  Not  thus  were  men  in  general  to 
be  taught  to  live  more  brotherlike.  The  rude  world 
of  the  Middle  Ages  went  on  its  way,  unaffected  in  the 
main  either  by  mysticism  or  by  the  movements  which 


THE  HIGHER  THEOLOGY  AND  ITS  EFFECTS.          267 

set  up  self-centred  societies  within  society.  It  needed 
a  more  human  spirit  to  affect  humanity  in  mass. 

Such  a  human  spirit,  indeed,  may  be  held  to  have 
shown  itself  in  the  movement  set  up  in  Florence  by 
Girolamo  Savonarola  near  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  Savonarola  was  moved  by  a  high  concern 
for  individual  conduct ;  and  his  gospel  was  substan- 
tially that  of  an  Ebionite  Christian,  wroth  with  all 
luxury  as  well  as  with  all  levity  of  life.  Thus  he 
wielded  a  great  influence,  setting  up  in  the  splendid 
Florence  of  the  later  Renaissance  a  forecast  of 
the  iron-bound  Geneva  of  Calvin.  It  is  no  final 
impeachment  of  him  to  say  that,  having  gone  so 
far,  he  failed  and  fell ;  but  it  is  clear  that  he  could 
not  have  been  a  durable  civilising  force.  His  influ- 
ence was  that  of  a  fanatic,  operating  by  contagion 
of  excitement  and  superstitious  fear,  not  that  of  an 
enlightener  or  a  statesmanlike  guide.  To  him 
amenity  and  luxury,  art  and  vice,  selfishness  and 
scepticism,  were  alike  anathema ;  and  he  set  up 
in  Florence  a  kind  of  pietistic  reign  of  terror,  driving 
impressionable  believers  to  give  up  their  pictures 
to  the  fire  for  peace'  sake,  and  even  letting  others  be 
forced  to  it  by  fear.  On  the  great  political  need  of 
the  Italian  cities,  a  fraternal  federation,  he  had  no 
light  whatever ;  and  we  find  him  encouraging  his 
fellow  citizens  in  their  fatal  passion  for  dominating 
Pisa  instead  of  making  of  her  an  ally  and  a  friend. 
Lacking  light,  he  finally  lacked  force  ;  and  when  he 
fell,  he  fell  utterly,  leaving  no  enduring  ideal  or  dis- 
cipline to  his  countrymen. 

Thus  on  every  side  and  at  every  point  in  the  history 
of  the  ages  of  faith  the  ostensibly  best  religious 
influences  are  found  failing  to  heal  society,  failing  to 


268  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

check  the  forces  of  oppression  and  dissolution  and 
strife.  If  we  would  trace  the  forces  which  really 
affected  social  structure  and  raised  masses  of  men 
some  way  in  the  scale  of  manhood,  we  must  turn  to 
the  clash  of  interests  and  classes,  the  play  of  secular 
knowledge,  the  undertakings  of  laymen  on  normal 
lines  of  aspiration  and  on  secular  views  of  right. 


§  3.  Christianity  and  Feudalism. 

We  have  seen,  in  studying  the  expansion  of  the 
Church,  how  it  grew  by  lending  itself  to  the  interests 
of  kings  and  chiefs  as  against  subjects.  On  the  same 
grounds,  it  made  for  empires  as  against  self-governing 
States.  But  inasmuch  as  the  papacy  ere  long  fell 
out  with  the  emperors  of  tlia  new  line  it  had  itself 
consecrated,  it  also  contributed  to  the  break-up  of 
feudalism,  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  term  ;  and  it 
is  possible  to  claim  for  the  church,  further,  a  restrain- 
ing influence  on  the  oppressive  action  of  feudalism, 
early  and  late,  in  various  directions.  Under  this 
head  would  fall  to  be  judged,  in  particular,  its  action 
on  slavery. 

As  the  institution  of  slavery  was  taken  over  by  the 
Christian  emperors  from  the  pagan  without  any  hint 
of  disapproval,  it  is  clear,  to  begin  with,  that  the 
Church  had  in  its  days  of  struggle  made  no  sign  of 
such  condemnation.  Nor  was  there  anything  in  its 
sacred  books  to  suggest  a  repudiation  of  slavery  :  on 
the  contrary,  Jesus  is  made  to  accept  it  as  a  matter  of 
course  (Luke  xvii.  7-10.  Gr.)  ;  and  Paul,  in  a  passage 
which  has  been  garbled  in  the  English  translation, 
expressly  urges  that  a  Christian  slave  should  remain 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  FEUDALISM.  269 

so  even  if  he  have  a  chance  to  become  free  (1  Cor.  vii. 
20,  21).  He  and  some  of  the  Fathers  certainly 
urge  that  slaves  should  be  kindly  treated ;  but 
many  pagans  had  done  as  much,  and  Seneca  on  that 
theme  had  outgone  them  all.  Laws  for  the  protec- 
tion of  slaves,  too,  had  been  enacted  by  many 
emperors  long  before  Constantine.  The  only  ground, 
then,  on  which  Christianity  could  be  credited  with 
setting  up  on  religious  grounds  an  aversion  to  slavery 
would  be  a  visible  increase  in  manumissions  after  the 
time  of  Constantine.  No  such  increase,  however, 
took  place. 

A  misconception  on  the  subject  has  arisen  by  way 
of  a  hasty  inference  from  the  fact  that  in  the  Christian 
period  all  manumissions  were  religious  acts,  per- 
formed through  the  Church.  This  was  no  result 
of  any  Christian  doctrine,  being  in  fact  a  deliberate 
imitation  of  pagan  practice.  Before  Constantine,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  act  of  manumission  was  a  religious 
one,  performed  as  such  in  the  pagan  temples;  and 
when  Constantine  adroitly  transferred  the  function 
from  those  temples  to  the  churches,  he  probably  put 
a  check  on  the  process  of  liberation,  since  pagans 
would  long  be  reluctant  to  go  to  the  churches  for  any 
purpose.  For  centuries  manumission  had  been  a 
common  act,  the  number  of  freedmen  in  Rome  being 
notoriously  great  at  all  times,  from  the  day  of  Cicero- 
onwards.  It  was  almost  a  matter  of  course  for  a 
Roman  master  to  free  a  multitude  of  his  slaves  on 
his  death-bed  or  by  his  will,  till  Augustus  enacted 
that  no  one  should  emancipate  more  than  a  hundred 
at  once.  A  diligent  slave,  in  fact,  could  usually  count 
on  getting  his  freedom  by  five  or  six  years  of 
service ;  and  many  were  allowed  to  buy  it  out  of 


270  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

their  savings,  or  out  of  earnings  they  were  permitted 
to  make. 

So  far  were  the  earlier  Christian  emperors,  with 
one  exception,  from  seeking  to  raise  the  status  of 
slaves,  that  they  re-enacted  the  rule  excluding  them 
from  the  purview  of  the  law  against  adultery, 
"  because  of  the  vileness  of  their  condition."  The 
exception  was  a  law  of  Con stan tine  forbidding  the 
separation  of  slaves  from  their  families — a  humane 
veto  disregarded  by  Christian  slaveowners  in  recent 
times.  But  Constantine  on  the  other  hand  enacted 
that  if  a  freewoman  should  cohabit  with  a  slave,  she 
should  be  executed,  and  he  burned  alive ;  and  the 
laws  against  fugitive  slaves  were  made  more  cruel. 
Gratian  even  enacted  that  any  slave  who  dared  to 
accuse  his  master  of  any  crime,  unless  it  were  high 
treason,  should  be  burned  alive,  without  any  inquiry 
into  the  charge.  For  the  rest,  the  Fathers  justified 
slavery  on  the  score  of  the  curse  passed  on  Ham  ; 
and  the  theses  of  the  Stoics  as  to  the  natural  equality 
of  men  had  from  them  no  countenance. 

Only  in  the  reign  of  Justinian  did  the  law  begin 
expressly  to  encourage  manumission,  to  recognise 
freedmen  as  full  citizens,  and  to  raise  the  slave 
status ;  and  several  circumstances  are  to  be  noted 
as  giving  a  lead  to  such  a  course.  Justinian  had 
pursued  a  policy  of  great  outlays  where  his  imme- 
diate predecessors  had  been  frugal,  and  to  sustain  it 
he  had  to  impose  much  fresh  taxation  on  the  land. 
For  fiscal  purposes,  it  had  long  been  recognised,  the 
government  did  well  to  limit  the  power  of  proprietors 
to  dispose  of  their  slaves ;  and  it  is  probable  that  the 
humane  law  of  Constantine  really  had  this  end  in 
view.  By  raising  slaves  to  the  status  of  half-free 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  FEUDALISM. 


271 


peasants,  the  State  increased  the  number  of  its 
taxpayers.  "  The  labourer  of  the  soil  then  became 
an  object  of  great  interest  to  the  treasury,  and 
obtained  almost  as  important  a  position  in  the  eyes 
of  the  fisc  as  the  landed  proprietor  himself."  In  the 
process  the  small  freeman  was  put  in  a  worse  position 
than  before ;  but  the  slave  was  at  the  same  time 
bettered — the  hereditary  slave,  that  is,  for  captives 
were  enslaved  or  bought  throughout  the  history  of  the 
Byzantine  empire. 

The  legal  change  was  thus  made  from  economic 
motives  ;  but  one  moral  gain  did  indirectly  accrue 
from  the  existence  of  the  Church  as  such.  Under 
Justinian  the  empire  was  re-expanded  after  having 
been  for  a  time  curtailed;  and  this  would  under 
paganism  have  meant  a  large  addition  to  the  number 
of  slaves.  The  recovered  lands,  however,  were  peopled 
by  Christians;  and  all  bishops  were  bound  in  their 
own  interest  to  resist  the  enslavement  and  deportation 
of  their  flocks  ;  so  that  Christianity  at  this  point  was 
favourable  to  freedom  exactly  as  was  Islam,  which 
forbade  Moslems  to  enslave  Moslems.  And  the 
indirect  benefit  did  not  end  there.  The  Church,  like 
the  fisc,  had  a  good  deal  to  gain  pecuniarily  from  the 
freeing  of  slaves ;  and,  especially  in  the  west,  though 
it  supported  slave-laws,  it  encouraged  masters  to 
manumit  for  the  sake  of  their  souls'  welfare  in  the 
next  world.  That  the  motive  here  again  was  political 
and  not  doctrinal  is  clear  from  the  two  facts — (1)  that 
even  when  making  serfs  priests  for  its  own  service  the 
Church  often  did  not  legally  free  them,  thus  keeping 
them  more  fully  subject  to  discipline ;  and  (2)  that 
while  urging  laymen  to  free  the  slaves  or  serfs  on 
their  lands  churchmen  were  the  last  to  free  those  on 


272  MEDIEVAL  CHBISTIANITY. 

their  own,  on  the  score  that  no  individuals  in  orders 
had  the  right  to  alienate  the  property  of  the  order  as 
such.  Other  economic  causes,  of  course,  effectually 
concurred  to  further  the  freeing  of  slaves  and  serfs, 
else  the  institution  would  not  have  decayed  as  it  did 
in  the  Middle  Ages.  It  is  noteworthy,  too,  that  while 
the  Jews  were  the  great  slave  dealers  for  Europe  in 
the  Dark  Ages,  thus  dangerously  deepening  their  own 
unpopularity  and  moving  the  Church  to  thwart  the 
traffic  on  Christian  grounds,  Christians  everywhere 
were  long  eager  to  buy  and  sell  barbarians  such  as 
the  Slavs  (from  whose  name  came  the  very  term  "  slave  " 
in  the  modern  languages)  ;  while  the  Christian  Anglo- 
Saxons  and  Anglo-Normans  for  centuries  maintained 
a  trade  in  kidnapped  Anglo-Saxon  or  British  children 
and  young  women,  selling  them  to  Ireland  after  they 
were  no  longer  saleable  on  the  continent.  A  similar 
traffic  went  on  among  the  Bohemians,  before  the  eyes 
of  St.  Adalbert.  What  the  Church  did,  broadly 
speaking,  was  to  restrain  the  enslavement  of  Chris- 
tians by  their  fellows  ;  and  to  raise  funds  to  redeem 
Christian  captives  from  the  Saracens.  To  a  certain 
extent  the  motive  was  religious :  otherwise  it  was  self- 
regarding. 

In  similarly  indirect  ways,  organised  Christianity 
tended  at  times  to  restrain  feudal  tyranny.  The 
bishop  and  the  abbot  were  territorial  magnates,  who 
to  some  extent  counterpoised  the  baron  ;  and  though 
the  bishops  were  too  often  only  barons  with  a  dif- 
ference, they  were  often  a  barrier  to  lay  ambition  and 
violence.  Even  as  the  king's  rule  might  protect  the 
common  people  as  against  their  local  lords — though 
the  feudal  system  did  not  originally  suppose  this — so 
the  Church  might  be  a  local  benefactor  in  virtue  of  its 


CHIUSTIANITY  AND  FEUDALISM. 


273 


local  interests.  Here  again,  however,  the  influence 
was  not  doctrinal ;  and  churchmen  in  general  endorsed 
the  feudal  law  in  letter  and  in  spirit,  always  availing 
themselves  of  its  machinery  to  extort  their  own  dues. 
On  the  other  hand,  insofar  as  the  papacy  in  the 
twelfth  century  began  to  throw  its  weight  on  the  side 
of  the  popular  party  in  Italy  as  against  the  aristo- 
cratic and  imperial  party,  thus  constituting  the 
Guelph  faction  as  against  the  Ghibeline,  it  indirectly 
furthered  the  cause  of  self-government ;  and  even  in 
its  official  doctrine  there  thus  came  to  be  inserted 
provisions  in  favour  of  the  claim  of  subjects  to  choose 
their  rulers.  The  teaching  of  Thomas  Aquinas  to 
this  effect  must  have  counted  for  something  in  the 
later  evolution  of  political  doctrine.  Nothing  how- 
ever is  more  remarkable  than  the  ease  with  which 
dutiful  kings,  as  those  of  later  Spain  and  France, 
secured  the  assent  of  the  Church,  as  the  early  barbarian 
kings  had  done,  to  the  suppression  of  all  popular 
liberties.  The  economic  or  administrative  interest  of 
the  Church  was  always  the  determinant  of  its  action. 
It  supplied  no  fixed  principle  conducive  to  peace  ;  on 
the  contrary,  it  was  always  a  force  the  more  for  war 
in  Europe. 

§  4.  Influence  of  the  Crusades. 

That  some  social  gains  may  be  correlative  with 
great  historic  evils  is  perhaps  best  seen  in  the  case  of 
the  Crusades  organised  by  the  Church  against  the 
Saracens  in  Palestine.  These  campaigns  were  first 
conceived  in  the  interests  of  the  papal  power  ;  and 
as  early  as  999  Pope  Sylvester  II.  (Gerbert),  who  had 
been  anti-papal  before  his  elevation,  sent  a  letter 


274  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

through  Europe  appealing  for  united  action  on  behalf 
of  the  Church  of  Jerusalem.  There  was  no  response. 
In  1074  Gregory  VII.  strove  hard  to  the  same  end, 
seeing  in  a  conquest  of  the  Turks  a  means  to  extend 
his  power  over  the  Eastern  Church.  Not,  how- 
ever, till  Europe  was  full  of  tales  of  the  cruelties 
wrought  by  the  new  Eastern  power,  the  Turks, 
against  Christian  pilgrims — a  marked  change  from 
the  comparative  tolerance  of  the  Caliphs — was  it 
possible  to  begin  a  vast  crusading  movement  among 
all  classes,  aiming  at  the  recovery  of  the  empty 
sepulchre  from  which  the  Christ  had  risen.  To  this 
movement  Pope  Urban  II.  zealously  lent  himself, 
backing  up  the  wild  appeal  of  Peter  the  Hermit  (1094) 
with  the  fatal  bribe  of  indulgences. 

The  first  effect  (1096)  was  to  collect  several  immense 
and  almost  formless  mobs  of  men  and  women  who  by 
all  accounts  were  in  the  main  the  refuse  of  Europe. 
"That  the  vast  majority  looked  upon  their  vow  as  a 
licence  for  the  commission  of  any  sin,  there  can  be 
no  moral  doubt."  The  devout  exaltation  of  the  few 
was  submerged  by  the  riot  of  the  many,  who  began 
using  their  indulgences  when  they  began  their  march, 
and  rolled  like  a  flood  across  Europe,  massacring, 
torturing,  and  plundering  Jews  wherever  they  found 
them,  and  forcibly  helping  themselves  to  food  where 
plunder  was  easy.  Multitudes  perished  by  the  way; 
multitudes  more  were  sold  as  slaves  in  Byzantium  to 
pay  for  the  feeding  of  the  rest  there  ;  and  of  the  seven 
thousand  who  reached  Asiatic  soil  with  Peter  the 
Hermit,  four  thousand  were  slain  by  the  Turks  at 
Nicaea ;  some  800,000  thus  perishing  in  all.  Inasmuch 
as  Europe  was  thus  rid  of  a  mass  of  its  worst  inhabi- 
tants, the  first  crusade  might  be  said  so  far  to  have 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  CRUSADES.  275 

wrought  indirect  good ;  but  the  claim  is  hardly  one 
to  be  pushed  on  religious  grounds. 

The  more  organised  military  forces  who  soon 
followed  under  Godfrey  of  Bouillon  and  other  leaders, 
though  morally  not  better  witnesses  to  Christianity, 
achieved  at  length  (1099)  the  capture  of  Jerusalem, 
and  founded  the  Latin  kingdom  of  Palestine,  which 
subsisted  in  force  for  less  than  a  hundred  years,  and 
in  a  nominal  form  for  a  century  longer.  As  a  display 
of  Christian  against  "  pagan  "  life  and  conduct,  the 
process  of  conquest  was  worse  than  anything  seen  in 
the  east  in  the  Christian  era.  No  armies  were  ever 
more  licentious  than  those  of  "  the  cross";  and  those 
of  Attila  were  hardly  more  ferocious.  Their  own  lives 
were  lost  in  myriads,  by  the  sword,  by  disease,  and 
by  debauchery  ;  they  were  divided  by  mutual  hatreds 
from  first  to  last ;  and  the  one  force  to  unify  them 
was  the  hatred  against  the  infidel  which  wreaked 
itself  in  the  massacre  of  men,  women,  and  children 
after  the  capture  of  a  city.  Besieging  Antioch,  they 
shot  heads  of  hundreds  of  slain  Turks  into  the  city 
from  their  engines,  and  dug  up  hundreds  of  corpses 
to  put  the  heads  on  pikes.  It  is  even  recorded  that 
when  their  savage  improvidence  left  them  starving  at 
the  siege  of  Marra  they  fed  on  the  corpses  they  dug 
up  ;  and  when  the  place  was  stormed  Bohemond  gave 
up  to  the  general  massacre  even  those  inhabitants  who 
had  paid  him  large  sums  for  their  lives,  sparing  only 
the  young,  whom  he  sent  to  the  slave-markets  of 
Antioch.  When  Godfrey  took  Jerusalem,  the  Jews 
there  were  all  burned  alive  in  their  synagogues ;  and 
the  chronicles  tell  that  the  crusaders  rode  their  horses 
to  the  temple  knee-deep  in  the  blood  of  many  thou- 
sands of  slain  misbelievers.  On  the  second  day,  in 


276  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

cold  blood,  there  was  wrought  a  fresh  massacre  by 
way  of  solemn  sacrifice ;  and  in  the  name  of  Jesus 
were  slain  a  great  multitude  of  every  age — mothers 
with  the  infants  in  their  arms,  little  children,  youths 
and  maidens,  and  men  and  women  bowed  with  age. 
Thus  was  retrieved  the  mythic  Saviour's  Sepulchre. 

Eight  times,  during  two  hundred  years,  was  the 
effort  repeated,  as  the  fortunes  of  the  Christian  princi- 
palities in  the  East  were  shaken  or  overthrown  by 
successive  Moslem  assailants,  and  as  the  papacy  saw 
its  chance  or  need  to  weaken  the  emperor,  or  other- 
wise avert  danger  to  itself,  by  renewing  the  call  to 
arms.  No  religious  teacher  seems  ever  to  have 
doubted  the  fitness  of  the  undertaking :  St.  Bernard 
preached  the  second  Crusade  as  zealously  as  Peter 
did  the  first ;  eloquent  monks  were  found,  as  they 
were  needed,  to  rouse  enthusiasm  for  each  of  the 
rest  in  turn ;  and  King  Louis  IX.  of  France,  the 
model  monarch  of  Christendom,  saw  in  his  vain 
expedition  to  recover  Jerusalem  (1248)  the  highest 
service  he  could  do  to  God  or  man.  As  each 
successive  crusade  failed  in  the  act  or  was  followed 
by  decadence  and  defeat,  the  church  professed  to  see 
in  the  disaster  a  penalty  for  Christian  sin  ;  and  under 
Innocent  III.  the  very  cardinals  of  Rome  vowed 
to  mend  their  ways,  by  way  of  reviving  the  warlike 
zeal  of  the  laity.  Among  other  fruits  of  the  crusading 
movement  had  been  a  vast  increase  in  the  papal 
revenues ;  and  whereas  the  imposts  specially  laid  on 
for  crusading  purposes  were  said  by  many  to  have 
been  appropriated  by  the  papal  court,  the  Pope  under- 
took to  put  the  administration  of  all  such  revenue 
under  non-clerical  trustees.  But  between  the 
hardness  of  the  military  task  and  the  endless  strifes 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  CRUSADES.  277 

and  degeneracies  of  the  leaders  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  growing  distrust  of  the  Church  on  the  other,  the 
crusading  spirit  died  out  in  the  thirteenth  century. 

To  all  who  could  sanely  judge,  it  had  become  clear 
that  the  crusades  were  at  once  a  vast  drain  on  the 
blood  and  treasure  of  Europe  and  a  vast  force  of 
demoralisation.  In  the  course  of  the  fifth,  the  govern- 
ment of  Venice  succeeded  in  using  the  crusaders,  in 
despite  of  the  protests  of  Innocent  III.,  to  wrest  the 
city  of  Zara  from  the  king  of  Hungary,  himself  a 
zealous  crusader.  Then  the  expedition,  with  the 
pope's  approval,  proceeded  to  interfere  in  Byzantine 
strifes,  making  and  unmaking  emperors,  until  they 
had  created  chaos,  whereupon  they  sacked  Constan- 
tinople (1204)  with  every  circumstance  of  vileness  and 
violence.  The  Pope,  who  had  hoped  to  reconcile  the 
Byzantines  to  papal  rule,  burst  out  in  bitter  indigna- 
tion at  the  deeds  of  the  men  to  whom  he  had  given 
his  indulgences ;  but  morality  was  at  an  end  all 
round,  as  might  have  been  foretold ;  and  the  Pope 
accepted  the  conquest  for  what  it  was  to  bring  him  in 
new  power.  Christendom  thenceforth  crusaded  with 
its  tongue  in  its  cheek.  From  the  first  the  papacy  had 
taught  that  no  faith  need  be  kept  with  unbelievers ;  and 
so  was  given  a  very  superfluous  apprenticeship  to  bad 
faith  between  Christians.  When  in  1212  there  broke 
out  the  hapless  Children's  Crusades,  out  of  the  30,000 
who  followed  the  boy  Stephen  some  way  through  France, 
5,000  were  shipped  at  Marseilles  by  merchants  who, 
professing  to  carry  them  "  for  the  cause  of  God,  and 
without  charge,"  sold  them  as  slaves  at  Algiers  and 
Alexandria.  The  last  recruits  furnished  by  Pope 
Nicholas  IV.  to  the  Grand  Master  of  the  Templars 
were  drawn  from  the  jails  of  Italy :  the  papacy  itself 


278  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

had  ceased  to  put  any  heart  in  the  struggle.  It  is 
a  reasonable  calculation  that  in  the  two  centuries 
from  the  first  crusade  to  the  fall  of  Acre  (1291)  there 
had  perished,  in  the  attempts  to  recover  and  hold  the 
Holy  Land,  nine  millions  of  human  beings,  at  least 
half  of  them  Christians.  Misery  and  chronic  pesti- 
lence had  slain  most;  but  the  mere  carnage  had  been 
stupendous. 

Much  has  been  written  as  to  the  gains  to  civilisa- 
tion from  the  "  intercourse "  thus  set  up  between 
West  and  East.  Gains  there  were;  and  if  we 
remember  that  thus  to  have  gained  was  the  measure 
of  the  incapacity  of  Christendom  for  peaceful  traffic 
with  the  world  of  Islam,  we  can  learn  from  the  process 
something  of  real  sociological  causation.  Men  who, 
from  ferocity  and  fanaticism,  could  not  make  quiet 
acquaintance  with  their  neighbours,  were  hurled 
against  them  in  furious  hordes,  generation  after  gene- 
ration, and  in  the  intervals  of  fighting  came  to  know 
something  of  their  arts  and  their  thought,  exchanging 
handicrafts  and  products.  The  crowning  irony  of 
the  evolution  lay  in  the  entrance  of  unbelief  into 
the  Christian  world  through  the  very  contact  with 
the  "  infidel  "  who  was  to  have  been  crushed.  This 
perhaps  was  the  discovery  that  disillusioned  the 
papacy.  And  but  for  the  spirit  of  faith  and  hate — 
the  true  correlatives  in  Christian  history — every  gain 
from  the  Crusades  might  have  been  made  ten  times 
over  in  commerce.  To  make  such  gains  at  the  price 
of  nine  million  lives  and  unutterable  demoralisation 
is  the  contribution  of  the  Crusades  to  civilisation. 

It  is  true  that  from  the  East  the  later  crusaders 
learned  what  chivalry  they  evolved ;  that  Saladin 
became  a  kind  of  model  hero  for  Christian  knights  ; 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  CRUSADES.  279 

and  that  he  could  hold  knightly  friendship  with 
Richard  of  England.  But  Richard  nevertheless  could 
massacre  two  thousand  hostages  in  cold  blood  for  an 
unpaid  debt ;  and  his  crusading  left  him  as  it  found 
him,  a  faithless  ruffian,  whom  to  honour  is  to  be 
cheated  by  a  romance.  Nor  did  passages  of  chivalry 
ever  root  out  of  crusaders'  hearts  the  creed  that  no 
faith  need  be  kept  with  a  misbeliever. 

It  is  true  again  that  the  Crusades  involved  much 
social  metabolism  in  Europe.  The  papal  indulgence 
freed  serfs  from  their  masters,  and  debtors  from  their 
usurers,  while  the  crusade  lasted :  the  crusading  barons 
freed  many  more  serfs  for  a  price  down,  and  sold 
broad  lands  to  middle-class  buyers  in  order  to  furnish 
themselves  for  the  campaign.  And  the  mere  stir  of 
the  exodus  and  the  return,  repeated  for  so  many 
generations,  was  a  vivifying  shock  to  the  torpor  of 
medieval  Europe,  where  war  was  for  many  the  one 
relief  to  a  vast  tedium.  But  the  torpor  must  go  to 
the  credit  of  the  creed  if  the  shock  does,  since  the 
faith  had  vetoed  the  intercourse  of  peace  :  and  to  the 
same  account  must  be  put  the  throwing  back  upon 
itself  of  the  Saracen  civilisation,  of  which  Christian 
enmity  directly  or  indirectly  wrought  the  arrest  and 
ruin,  first  in  the  East,  later  in  Spain.  Such  wreck- 
ages surely  block  the  path  of  the  wrecker.  If,  finally, 
we  seek  to  measure  the  reactions  of  crusading  savagery 
on  the  life  of  those  who  wrought  and  those  who 
applauded  it — a  reaction  seldom  reckoned  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  "  results  " — we  shall  be  well  prepared 
for  the  discovery  that  in  the  fourteenth  century  the 
general  lot  of  men  in  Europe  showed  no  betterment ; 
that  the  tillers  of  the  soil  had  still  to  sweat  blood 
under  feudal  masters,  save  where  the  enormous  loss 


280  MEDIEVAL  CHBISTIANITY. 

of  life  through  the  pestilence  known  as  the  Black 
Death  had  for  a  time  raised  the  price  of  labour ; 
and  that  the  institution  which  above  all  embodied 
for  Europe  the  memory  of  the  Crusades,  the 
Order  of  the  Knights  Templars,  was  at  length 
crushed  in  its  home  by  as  base  a  conspiracy  and 
as  cruel  a  slaughter  as  ever  marked  the  struggle 
of  Christian  with  Mohammedan.  It  was  pretended 
by  Philip  the  Fair  of  France,  who  began  the  plot, 
that  the  Order  was  anti- Christian,  and  devoted  to 
blasphemous  rites  ;  but  there  is  no  proof  of  the  occur- 
rence of  anything  more  than  irregular  acts  of  irre- 
verence, answering  to  the  artistic  ribaldries  of  the 
mason-companies  who  built  the  cathedrals.  That 
phenomenon  is  in  itself  noteworthy,  as  showing  how 
the  Crusades  had  tended  to  shake  faith ;  but  the 
Templars  as  a  whole  were  no  more  unbelievers  than 
the  kings  who  coveted  their  wealth.  It  was  for  that 
wealth,  which  was  indeed  incongruously  great,  that 
they  were  conspired  against  by  their  fellow  Christians, 
who  in  two  hundred  years  of  a  precarious  union  of 
enmity  against  men  of  another  faith  had  not  learned 
goodwill  towards  those  of  their  own.  The  drama 
ended  as  it  began,  in  hatred  and  crime. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE    INTELLECTUAL    LIFE. 

§  1.  Superstition  and  Intolerance. 

IN  judging  of  the  intellectual  life  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
account  must  always  be  taken  of  the  fact  that  their 
earlier  literature  is  mainly  religious  and  ecclesiastical, 
and  that  such  literature  often  gives  a  very  faint  idea  of 
the  higher  mental  life  of  the  educated  laity.  In  our 
own  time,  and  still  more  in  the  last  two  centuries, 
the  literature  of  devotion  and  of  the  church  seldom 
suggests  the  play  of  intelligence  that  actually  goes  on 
in  the  world  :  taken  by  itself,  indeed,  it  would  often 
imply  intellectual  decline.  As  we  have  seen  and 
shall  see,  the  Middle  Ages  had  an  intellectual  life 
apart  from  the  Church ;  and  in  the  period  we  term 
the  Renaissance  that  life  was  far-reaching  :  there  is 
reason  therefore  to  question  whether  at  a  time  when 
authors  were  mostly  clerics  there  was  not  some  sane 
thinking  of  which  we  read  little  or  nothing.  But 
even  if  such  allowance  be  made,  the  fact  remains  that 
the  period  of  clerical  supremacy  in  literature  is  a 
period  of  enormous  superstition. 

Under  that  term  even  religious  people  now  include 
a  habitual  belief  in  diabolical  agency,  a  constant 
affirmation  of  miracles,  portents,  divine  and  fiendish 
apparitions  ;  and  the  Protestant  adds  to  the  definition 
saint- worship,  [belief  in  the  supernatural  virtue  of 

281 


282  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

relics,  and  the  acceptance  of  the  daily  miracle  of  tran- 
substantiation.  But  even  if  questions  of  doctrine  be 
put  aside,  we  may  sum  up  that  the  average  Christian 
in  the  Middle  Ages  was  more  credulous  as  to  daily 
prodigies,  saintly  and  fiendish,  than  even  the  average 
Catholic  peasant  of  to-day  in  the  more  backward 
European  countries.  Doubters  and  unbelievers  there 
must  always  have  been ;  but  in  the  medieval  period 
it  was  dangerous  to  utter  doubt,  unless  by  way  of 
attack  on  priests  and  monks  in  circles  where  they 
were  not  popular.  Ribald  doubt,  besides,  came  off 
best :  grave  disbelief  incurred  suspicion  ;  and  where 
men  cannot  speak  their  thought  they  are  hindered  in 
their  thinking.  The  most  unseemly  debates,  such  as 
that  as  to  whether  the  eucharist  when  eaten  passed 
through  the  normal  process  of  digestion  ("  ster- 
coranism  "  was  the  name  given  to  the  heresy  that  it 
did),  and  that  set  up  by  Ratrarnnus  as  to  how  the 
impregnation  of  the  Virgin  actually  took  place — such 
discussions  could  go  on  freely  ;  but  more  decent  con- 
troversy could  not.  Beyond  question,  the  influence 
of  clerical  literature  was  mainly  for  gross  credulity. 
The  lives  of  the  saints  in  general,  from  Gregory  I. 
onwards,  tell  constantly  of  a  puerility  of  judgment 
which  to  an  ancient  Greek  would  have  been  incon- 
ceivable, and  which  was  incompatible  not  only  with 
rational  thought  but  with  tolerable  veracity.  Lan- 
guage and  the  art  of  writing  had  become  means  of 
destroying  common  sense.  In  the  hands  of  the  hagio- 
graphers,  the  use  of  miracle  so  far  outgoes  the  older 
tradition  that  it  must  have  finally  failed  to  suggest 
anything  divine — even  to  a  believer.  To  a  sceptic  it 
suggests  burlesque. 
On  the  other  hand,  medieval  life  was  in  the  main 


SUPERSTITION  AND  INTOLERANCE.  283 

as  much  ridden  by  fear  of  evil  spirits  as  that  of  any 
savages  of  our  own  time ;  for  every  people  had  kept 
the  notion  of  their  hostile  sprites,  and  the  Christian 
devil  was  simply  made  the  God  of  that  kingdom. 
Life,  too,  was  shorter  than  moderns  can  well  realise ;  so- 
high  was  the  normal  death-rate,  so  frequent  was  pesti- 
lence, so  little  understood  was  disease ;  and  the  nearness 
of  death  made  men  either  reckless  or  afraid.  Where 
ignorance  and  fear  go  hand  in  hand,  is  the  realm  of 
superstition.  Average  religion  was  summed  up  in  a 
perfectly  superstitious  use  of  the  sacraments  of 
baptism  and  the  eucharist ;  a  devout  hope  in  the 
intercession  and  protection  of  the  .  saints  ;  an  ever- 
present  fear  of  the  activity  of  the  fiend  ;  a  singularly 
mechanical  use  of  formularies ;  an  intense  anxiety  to 
possess  or  benefit  by  holy  relics,  the  easy  manufacture 
of  which  must  have  enriched  myriads  ;  a  chronic  fear 
of  sorcery ;  and  a  conception  of  hell  and  purgatory 
so  literal  that  its  general  failure  to  amend  or  control 
conduct  is  a  revelation  of  the  inconsequence  of  average 
morality.  It  is  often  hard  to  distinguish  in  medieval 
religion  between  devotional  and  criminal  motives. 
In  the  life  of  the  Italian  St.  Romuald  (10th  c.),  it  is 
told  that  when  he  insisted  on  leaving  the  retreat  in 
Catalonia  where  he  had  won  a  saintly  repute,  the 
Catalans  proposed  to  kill  him  in  order  to  possess  his 
relics.  He  in  turn  cudgelled  his  father  nearly  to 
death  to  make  him  adhere  to  his  profession  of  the 
religious  life.  Such  ethical  ideas  expressed  themselves 
in  the  monastic  caste  not  only  in  austerities  but  in 
systematic  self-flagellation ;  and  in  the  thirteenth, 
fourteenth,  and  fifteenth  centuries  the  principle 
evolved  the  chronic  movements  of  the  Flagellants 
specially  so-called,  whose  wild  and  public  self -tortures- 


284  MEDIEVAL  CHKISTIANITY. 

neither  Church  nor  State  could  put  down  while  the 
mania  lasted. 

In  such  a  world,  primed  by  a  great  caste  of  priests, 
intolerance  had  its  ideal  habitat.  Aversion  to  inno- 
vating thought  is  as  natural  to  man  as  egoism ;  and 
an  innovating  religion  is  no  sooner  established  than  it 
finds  equilibrium  in  denouncing  innovation.  Thus, 
€ven  apart  from  clerical  action,  and  apart  too  from 
the  ethnic  animosity  to  Mohammedanism,  the  medieval 
laity,  knowing  nothing  of  the  long  intellectual  and 
sectarian  struggles  which  have  forced  tolerance  on 
modern  polity,  were  spontaneous  persecutors  of  heresy 
save  where  it  appealed  primarily  to  their  anti-clerical 
economic  interests,  or  carried  them  away  by  mere 
contagion  of  physical  excitement.  The  Flagellants, 
for  instance,  seem  positively  to  have  hypnotised  many 
by  their  procedure,  as  did  the  partly  kindred  and 
partly  contrary  sect  of  Dancers,  who  flourished  in 
Flanders  and  Germany  late  in  the  fourteenth  century. 
It  is  thus  credible  that  some  were  cured  by  incanta- 
tions, which  were  hypnotic  with  a  difference.  But  all 
such  eccentrics  were  normally  liable  to  cruel  ill-treat- 
ment from  their  conforming  fellows ;  and  it  is  clear 
that  in  the  fourteenth  century  the  mystical  and  com- 
munistic heresies  of  Beghards  and  Beguins,  male  and 
female,  were  promptly  persecuted  by  the  general  laity. 
The  religion  which  categorically  taught  men  to  love 
their  enemies,  never  seems  to  have  prepared  them  to 
endure  in  their  neighbours  a  difference  of  doctrine. 
It  is  probable,  too,  that  during  the  Dark  Ages  thou- 
sands of  helpless  souls  were  put  to  death  as  sorcerers 
by  mobs  without  process  of  law,  apart  from  those 
executed  under  the  old  laws  against  magic  or  divina- 
tion, and  the  Teutonic  codes  of  the  same  order.  In  a 


THE  INQUISITION.  285 

similar  spirit,  Christian  inobs  in  all  countries  and 
ages  had  chronically  wreaked  a  half-religious,  half- 
economic  hatred  on  the  Jews,  of  whom  enormous 
numbers  died  by  massacre.  Here  the  motive  was  not 
wholly  religious,  since  their  unfortunate  specialisation 
in  usury  had  set  up  ill-will  against  the  Jews  in  the 
period  of  the  pagan  empire,  and  even  among  the 
Moors,  who  had  given  them  religious  toleration  ;  but 
Christian  animus  certainly  counted  for  much,  and 
carried  the  passion  to  lengths  rarely  reached  in 
antiquity.  Thus  the  common  run  of  Christian  life 
was  grossly  intolerant.  It  was  left  to  the  Church  as 
such,  however,  to  frame  for  the  suppression  of  free 
thought  in  religion  a  machinery  never  paralleled  in 
human  history. 

§  2.  The  Inquisition. 

Though  all  the  heresy  hunts  of  the  ancient  church 
had  implied  an  inquisitorial  ideal,  nothing  in  the 
nature  of  a  "  Holy  Office"  had  existed  in  the  Church 
till  the  second  quarter  of  the  thirteenth  century.  It  was 
felt  that  the  faithful  could  as  a  rule  be  trusted  to  raise 
the  cry  of  heresy  wherever  it  could  be  scented.  Such 
prompt  action  we  have  seen  taken  in  the  cases  of 
.Tovinian,  Pelagius,  Gottschalk,  and  Berengar.  But 
in  the  twelfth  century  the  spirit  of  militant  orthodoxy, 
as  seen  in  zealots  like  St.  Bernard,  had  reached  a 
strength  which  pointed  to  some  systematic  action  on 
the  part  of  the  now  much  aggrandised  papacy.  St. 
Bernard's  attitude  to  Abailard  is  that  of  the  true 
Inquisitor  :  he  suspects,  to  begin  with,  the  accursed 
spirit  of  independent  thought,  and  he  is  straightway 
determined  to  make  an  example  of  the  upstart  who 


286  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

dares  to  reason  on  all  doctrines  for  himself.  But  even 
St.  Bernard,  eager  as  he  was  for  the  blood  of  Moslems, 
-could  hardly  have  anticipated  the  spirit  in  which  the 
papacy  acted  from  the  Albigensian  crusade  onwards. 
Coincident  with  that  crusade  was  the  digging  up  of 
Amalrich's  bones,  the  burning  of  his  followers,  and 
the  veto  on  the  study  of  Aristotle  at  Paris.  Intoler- 
ance had  entered  on  a  new  era. 

The  first  steps  towards  a  systematic  and  centralised 
Inquisition  were  taken  about  1178,  when,  under  Pope 
Alexander  III.,  the  Church  began  moving  against  the 
41  Manichean  "  heretics  of  Languedoc.  A  papal  legate 
at  that  time  forced  from  the  Count  of  Toulouse  and 
his  nobles  a  promise  on  oath  to  resist  heresy  ;  and  in 
a  council  of  the  following  year  orthodox  princes  in 
general  were  invited  to  use  force  for  the  purpose. 
The  Pope  proceeded  not  only  to  excommunicate  the 
heretics  and  their  backers  but  to  declare,  in  the 
fashion  already  consecrated  by  the  Crusades,  that  no 
one  need  keep  faith  with  them ;  further  offering  indul- 
gences for  two  years  to  all  who  should  make  war  on 
them,  and  calling  on  their  lords  to  reduce  them  to 
•slavery.  As  a  result,  a  crusade  was  made  in  1181,  so 
little  marked  by  bloodshed  as  to  be  insignificant  in 
comparison  with  those  of  the  next  generation,  but 
sufficient  to  force  an  abjuration  of  heresy  from  the 
lords  concerned.  Thereafter,  in  1184,  a  Council  held 
at  Verona  prescribed  with  a  new  precision  and 
emphasis  a  systematic  search  for  heresy  by  all  bishops, 
and  called  upon  the  nobles  to  lend  their  support  in 
the  way  of  the  necessary  violence.  Innocent  III.  had 
thus  had  the  way  marked  out  for  him,  alike  in  sup- 
pression and  in  prevention  ;  and  the  Inquisition  as 
such  dates  from  the  close  of  his  crusade  against  the 


THE  INQUISITION.  287 

Albigenses,  when  Pope  Gregory  IX.  took  from  the 
bishops  the  business  of  heresy-hunting  and  made  it  a 
special  task  of  the  Dominican  order  (1233).  After 
"  Manichseism  "  had  been  stamped  out  there  was  a 
lull  in  persecution  as  in  heresy ;  but  the  institution 
remained,  to  prevent  new  growths. 

The  broad  outcome  of  its  work  was  that  whereas 
the  twelfth  century  had  been  one  of  intellectual  dawn, 
and  the  thirteenth,  despite  its  murderous  beginning, 
one  of  diffusion  of  light,  the  fourteenth  was  on  the 
whole  one  of  stationary  knowledge,  save  in  Italy 
itself,  where  the  full-grown  energies  of  the  Renais- 
sance for  the  time  defied  repression.  Indeed  the 
Church  cared  little  about  mere  unbelief,  as  distinct 
from  anti-clerical  heresy,  where  its  political  rule  was 
not  thereby  affected ;  and  in  Italy,  when  anti-cleri- 
calism was  once  put  down,  its  wealth  made  it  secure. 
Even  in  Italy  the  literary  life  of  the  fourteenth 
century  was  rather  artistic  than  intellectual,  science 
and  serious  thought  making  little  progress ;  while  in 
northern  Europe  they  were  visibly  arrested.  It  was 
in  the  outlying  States,  where  heresy  might  mean  a 
cessation  of  papal  revenue,  that  the  Dominicans  were 
specially  hounded  on  to  their  work.  In  England,  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  thirteenth  century,  the  great 
spirit  of  Roger  Bacon  was  cabined  and  confined  by 
inquisitorial  enmities ;  and  in  France  in  the  four- 
teenth there  was  a  signal  suspension  of  intellectual 
life,  in  the  face  of  the  activities  of  original  thinkers 
such  as  William  of  Occam.  The  throttling  of  the 
civilisation  of  the  south  had  reacted  on  the  north. 
Doubtless  the  desperate  wars  to  which  crusading 
experience  had  given  a  new  incitement  counted  for 
much  ;  and  the  constant  political  intrigues  of  the 


288  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

papacy  for  more,  in  arresting  mental  growth.  "  When 
a  city  for  any  political  proceeding  had  given  offence  to- 
its  political  head,  emperor  or  king,  or  had  irritated  a 
Roman  bishop  by  opposition,  the  usual  punishment, 
by  command  or  interdict,  was  to  inhibit  its  professors 
from  teaching,  and  to  disperse  its  scholars."  All  the 
political  causes  wrought  together  for  the  hindrance  of 
human  advancement.  The  immense  destruction  of 
population  by  the  Black  Death,  finally,  was  a  great 
incitement  to  superstition. 

The  main  effect  of  the  Inquisition  is  seen  in  Spain, 
which  in  the  Saracen  period  had  been  one  of  the 
great  sources  of  new  thought  and  knowledge. 
There,  despite  the  element  of  intellectual  curiosity 
set  up  in  the  period  of  Moorish  supremacy,  when  the 
Christians  were  in  general  treated  with  tolerance,,  the 
spirit  of  fanaticism  was  gradually  ingrained  by  the 
long  struggle  between  Christians  and  Moslems  for 
the  land ;  and  an  inquisitorial  war  on  Jewish  and 
Moorish  ideas  was  part  of  the  Christian  campaign. 
As  the  Christians  gained  ground,  ecclesiasticism  gained 
with  them  ;  yet  when  the  Inquisition,  not  yet  a  per- 
manent Spanish  tribunal,  was  set  up  in  Spain  in 
1236,  it  was  received  by  a  large  part  of  the  population 
with  fear  and  dislike.  It  is  an  error  to  suppose  that 
there  was  something  in  "  Spanish  character  "  specially 
prone  to  the  methods  of  the  Inquisition.  Spanish 
orthodoxy  is  a  manufactured  product,  and  represents 
the  triumph,  under  special  conditions,  of  the  fanatical 
element  which  belongs  to  every  nation.  Not  only  did 
many  eminent  Spaniards  detest  and  denounce  the 
Inquisition  in  its  first  and  imperfectly  destructive 
form  :  the  common  people  rioted  against  it  when ,  in 
its  permanent  and  more  murderous  form,  it  was 


THE  INQUISITION. 


289 


constituted  in  1478-88,  and  put  under  Torquemada. 
That  memorable  persecutor  long  felt  his  life  to  be  in 
danger  from  the  people,  both  in  Aragon  and  in  Castile; 
and  the  first  inquisitor-general  of  Aragon  was  actually 
killed  by  them.  Yet  even  the  "  ancient  "  Inquisition 
had  been  fatally  successful.  In  the  two  centuries 
from  its  establishment,  while  Averroism  was  rife  in 
Italy  and  France,  Christian  Spain  must  have  been 
well  nigh  rid  of  the  other  forms  of  heretical  thought  ; 
and  the  first  step  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  after  their 
crowning  triumph  was  to  expel  all  Jews  who  would 
not  apostatise.  On  the  remaining  Moors  the  new 
Inquisition  went  to  work  in  a  similar  spirit,  perse- 
cuting them,  baptising  them  by  force,  burning  their 
books,  and  driving  them  repeatedly  to  revolts,  which 
were  always  murderously  put  down.  Finally,  after 
the  failure  of  the  great  Armada  against  England,  the 
Inquisitors  decided  that  the  cause  of  the  divine  wrath 
was  their  undue  toleration  of  heresy,  and  a  million  of 
nonconforming  Moriscoes  were  miserably  driven  out 
of  Spain,  as  a  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  Jews  had 
been  a  century  before. 

As  all  civilisation  lives  by  the  play  of  intellectual 
variation,  Spain  was  now  stripped  of  a  large  part  of 
her  mental  as  well  as  her  material  resources  ;  and 
the  continued  work  of  the  Inquisition  at  length 
clinched  the  arrest  of  her  brilliant  literature  for 
centuries,  keeping  her  devoid  of  science  while  the 
rest  of  Europe  was  gathering  it.  In  introducing  the 
Inquisition  the  Church  had  destroyed  the  specific 
civilisation  of  southern  France,  thereby  laming  that 
of  northern  France  ;  and  in  thereafter  applying  the 
machine  to  the  civilisation  of  Spain  she  reduced  that 
to  inanition. 


290  MEDIEVAL  CHKISTIANITY. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  the  Inquisition's 
purpose  was  to  destroy  books  no  less  than  men  ;  and 
until  printing  overpowered  the  effort,  the  check  thus 
put  on  the  spread  of  rational  thought  bade  fair  to  be 
fatal.  In  a  single  auto-da-fe  ("  act  of  faith  ")  at  Sala- 
manca, near  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  six  thou- 
sand volumes  were  burned,  on  the  pretence  that  they 
contained  Judaic  errors,  or  were  concerned  with  magic 
and  witchcraft.  It  is  certain  that  many  of  them  were 
of  another  character.  Elsewhere  the  work  of  destruc- 
tion was  less  ostentatiously  done,  but  it  was  constant. 

In  the  matter  of  torture  and  slaughter,  however, 
the  work  of  the  Inquisition  has  become  a  proverb  ; 
and  after  all  corrections  have  been  made  on  the 
earlier  estimates  by  Llorente  and  other  historians, 
the  figures  remain  frightful.  In  "a  few  years,"  the 
New  Inquisition  burned  alive,  in  Castile  alone, 
nearly  two  thousand  persons,  and  variously  penalised 
some  twenty  thousand  more.  At  this  rate,  many 
thousands  must  have  been  burned  in  a  generation  ; 
and  the  statement  that  nearly  two  hundred  thousand 
passed  through  the  Spanish  Inquisition's  hands  in 
thirty- six  years  is  sadly  credible.  Its  methods  were 
the  negation  of  every  principle  of  justice.  Any  evi- 
dence, including  that  of  criminals,  children,  and  even 
idiots,  was  valid  against  an  accused  person,  while  only 
that  of  the  most  unimpeachable  kind  was  heard  in  his 
favour;  all  proceedings  were  strictly  private;  false 
informers  were  almost  never  punished ;  and  the 
general  principle  was  that  anyone  who  was  tried  must 
be  somehow  guilty,  the  Inquisition  being  like  the  Pope 
infallible.  Thus,  if  a  man  could  not  be  convicted  of 
real  heresy,  he  could  be  punished  for  an  error  in  the 
repetition  of  a  prayer  or  a  creed.  But  the  torture- 


CLASSIC  SURVIVALS  AND  SARACEN  CONTACTS.      291 

chamber  can  seldom  have  failed  to  yield  whatever 
proof  was  sought  for.  No  such  reign  of  terror  and 
horror  has  occurred  in  any  other  period  of  European 
history ;  and  only  in  the  practices  of  witch-finders 
among  savages  can  its  systematic  atrocity  be  any- 
where paralleled. 


§  3.  Classic  Survivals  and  Saracen  Contacts. 

Ancient  literature,  as  we  have  seen,  was  nearing 
its  nadir  when  Christianity  was  becoming  supreme  in 
the  decadent  Roman  Empire ;  and  with  the  formal 
extinction  of  classic  paganism  came  the  virtual  extinc- 
tion of  fine  letters,  science,  and  philosophy,  in  the 
Byzantine  State  no  less  than  in  the  West.  The  last 
Christian  writers  of  any  philosophic  importance  were 
really  products  of  classic  culture  and  the  ancient 
civilisation.  When  that  civilisation  had  been  out- 
wardly transformed  to  a  Christian  guise,  the  mental 
life  shrank  to  the  field  of  theology,  with  a  few  fenced 
and  meagre  plots  of  scholastic  drilling-ground.  Of 
the  decayed  discipline  of  ancient  culture,  Christian 
civilisation  preserved  only  the  most  mechanical  for- 
mulas ;  and  the  mental  training  of  the  Dark  Ages 
consisted  in  a  few  handbooks  (notably  those  by 
Martianus  Capella  and  Cassiodorus)  of  what  was  then 
encyclopedic  knowledge — the  rules  of  Latin  grammar, 
dialectics  or  elementary  logic,  rhetoric,  music,  arith- 
metic, elementary  geometry,  and  some  traditional 
astronomy.  The  first  three  constituted  the  Trivium 
or  introductory  course  in  the  medieval  schools ;  the 
others  the  Quadrivium  :  together  "  the  seven  liberal 
arts."  The  larger  Encyclopedia  of  Isidore  of  Seville, 


292  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

the  standard  authority  for  centuries,  is  as  mechanical, 
as  devoid  of  living  thought,  as  empty  of  scientific 
knowledge,  as  any  of  the  others.  In  the  way  of 
literature,  there  was  left  to  most  westerns  little  beyond 
a  few  of  the  later  Latin  writers,  such  as  Boethius, 
who  could  pass  muster  as  being  Christians,  Gregory 
the  Great  having  set  the  note  of  theological  anathema 
against  the  pagan  poets  and  philosophers  ;  and  classic 
history  survived  only  in  bad  abstracts. 

Wherever  in  the  Dark  Ages  we  meet  with  any 
power  of  thought,  it  is  to  be  traced  either  to  the 
influence  of  Saracen  contacts  or,  as  in  John  Scotus, 
to  the  Greek  scholarship  that  had  been  preserved  in 
Ireland  while  the  western  empire  was  being  dissolved 
in  barbarism.  The  English  Alcuin,  who  had  loyally 
aided  Charlemagne  in  his  efforts  to  spread'  education 
in  the  new  "  Holy  Koman  "  empire,  got  his  culture 
in  an  atmosphere  where  that  influence  had  partly 
survived.  Beyond  this,  the  Latin  world  had  preserved 
from  the  past,  in  the  law  schools  which  never  wholly 
died  out  in  Italy,  a  professional  knowledge  of  the 
Justinian  code,  which  the  Lombards  and  Franks  had 
allowed  to  subsist  for  those  who  claimed  to  be  judged 
by  it,  and  which  remained  the  proper  law  of  the  papal 
territory  after  Charlemagne.  In  the  sphere  of  such 
special  knowledge,  though  it  was  strictly  monopolised, 
there  was  doubtless  an  intellectual  life  largely  inde- 
pendent of  religion  ;  and  there  some  classical  culture 
probably  always  flourished. 

The  first  effectual  movements  of  new  mental  life, 
however,  come  from  contact  with  the  Saracens  of 
Spain.  While  the  Byzantine  world  let  the  treasures 
of  old  Greek  knowledge  fall  from  its  hands,  the 
Mohammedans  in  the  East  early  acquired,  at  first 


CLASSIC  SURVIVALS  AND  SARACEN  CONTACTS.      293 

through  the  Nestorian  Christians,  some  knowledge  of 
Aristotle  and  of  Greek  mathematics,  medicine,  and 
astronomy ;  and  this  in  the  progressive  Saracen  period 
was  passed  on  to  the  Moors  of  Spain.  Thence  came 
into  the  Latin  world  the  beginnings  of  science,  as 
anciently  known,  with  the  beginnings  of  chemistry, 
an  Arab  creation.  After  the  period  of  John  Scotus, 
all  culture  had  for  centuries  decayed :  the  few  who 
cared  to  read  were  monks,  taught  to  hold  pagan  lore 
in  horror ;  so  that  at  the  end  of  the  ninth  century 
even  such  schooling  as  the  trivium  and  quadrivium 
was  rare  in  what  had  been  the  realm  of  Charlemagne  ; 
and  the  later  manuals,  such  as  that  of  St.  Remi,  were 
even  more  puerile  than  the  older.  Only  from  new 
culture-contacts  could  new  culture  arise. 

One  of  the  most  fruitful  impulses  to  such  life  was 
the  introduction,  late  in  the  tenth  century,  by  Gerbert, 
afterwards  Pope  Sylvester  II.,  of  an  intermediate  form 
of  the  Arabic  numerals,  making  possible  the  decimal 
notation.  Gerbert  had  acquired  in  his  youthful  sojourn 
on  the  Spanish  march — not  among  the  Moors,  as  the 
tradition  has  it — some  knowledge  of  Arab  mathe- 
matics and  of  the  logic  of  Aristotle ;  and  where  his 
predecessors  in  the  cathedral  school  at  Rheims  had 
for  the  most  part  shunned  the  Latin  classics,  he  used 
them  freely  in  teaching  rhetoric.  But  the  impulse  he 
gave  to  the  science  of  number,  so  vital  alike  for 
astronomy  and  for  chemistry,  was  his  greatest  practical 
serviee.  Those  who  used  his  method  of  calculating 
were  called  Gerbertists ;  and  in  that  still  dark  age 
even  such  knowledge  as  his  gave  rise  to  the  belief  that 
he  had  dealings  with  the  devil. 

The  new  life  was  slow  to  take  root ;  and  when  in 
the  eleventh  century  the  English  monk  Adelhard 


294  MEDIEVAL  CHKISTIANITY. 

translated  from  the  Arabic,  which  he  had  learned  in  his 
travels  in  Spain  and  Egypt,  the  Elements  of  Euclid,  he 
found  little  welcome  for  it.  Not  till  a  century  later  did 
a  fresh  translation  of  Euclid  from  the  Arabic,  by 
Campanus,  make  its  way  in  the  schools.  Algebra  came 
from  the  same  source,  through  a  travelling  merchant 
of  Pisa,  about  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century. 
Thenceforth  the  infant  sciences  of  physics  held  their 
ground,  and  from  those  beginnings  became  possible 
the  lore  of  Koger  Bacon.  A  genuine  scientific  spirit 
indeed  was  slow  to  grow :  the  ideals  and  ethics  of 
religion  had  almost  atrophied  among  Christians  the 
instinct  for  simple  truth  ;  but  the  passion  for  astrology 
promoted  astronomy,  and  the  passion  for  gold  pro- 
moted chemistry,  all  its  practitioners  hoping  for  the 
philosopher's  stone,  which  should  transmute  lead  into 
gold.  Always  it  is  from  the  Arabs  that  the  impulse 
comes.  Under  the  emperor  Frederick  II.,  who  in  his 
Sicilian  seat  gave  free  course  to  Saracen  culture  and 
thought,  was  first  translated  from  the  Arabic  the 
Greek  Ptolemy's  great  work  on  astronomy ;  and  for 
Alphonso  X.  of  Castile,  by  Moorish  means,  were  com- 
piled new  astronomical  tables.  From  the  Arabs  too 
came  trigonometry,  which  even  for  the  Greeks  had 
not  been  a  separate  science ;  and  only  in  the  fifteenth 
century  did  Miiller  of  Konigsberg  ("  Regiomontanus  "), 
who  perfected  the  decimal  notation,  first  give  it  new 
developments. 

New  philosophic  thought  came  by  the  same  paths. 
Between  the  philosophy  of  the  Arab  Averroes,  with 
its  Aristotelian  basis  and  its  lead  to  pantheism  and 
materialism  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  moral  reaction 
set  up  by  the  Crusades  on  the  other,  the  bases  of 
Christian  orthodoxy  were  shaken.  The  legend  that 


CLASSIC  SURVIVALS  AND  SARACEN  CONTACTS.      295 

Frederick  II.  wrote  a  treatise  entitled  The  Three 
Impostors,  dealing  with  Moses,  Jesus,  and  Mohammed, 
is  a  fable :  there  was  probably  no  such  book  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  for  it  would  have  meant  death  at  the 
hands  of  the  Inquisition  to  possess  it ;  but  the  very 
phrase  showed  what  men  had  become  capable  of 
thinking  and  saying. 

As  the  Renaissance  proceeded  in  Italy  in  the  teeth 
of  the  strifes  which  ultimately  destroyed  Italian 
liberty,  men  turned  with  all  the  zest  of  new  intel- 
ligence to  the  remains  of  Latin  literature.  Virgil 
had  become  for  the  Middle  Ages  a  beneficent  magician, 
a  kind  of  classic  Merlin,  and  as  such  he  is  framed  by 
Dante  in  his  great  poem  of  the  other  world.  Religion 
in  Italy  had  been  brought  into  something  like  con- 
tempt by  the  lives  and  deeds  of  its  ministers ;  and 
only  in  the  literature  of  civilised  antiquity  could  intel- 
lectual men  find  at  once  stimulus  and  satisfaction.  It 
is  to  be  said  for  the  popes  and  cardinals  of  Rome, 
now  among  the  wealthiest  princes  of  Christendom, 
that  they  too  promoted  the  revival  of  learning  by  their 
rewards.  On  their  urging,  scholars  retrieved  classics 
from  the  garrets  and  cellars  of  a  hundred  monasteries, 
or  from  the  scrolls  from  which  they  had  been  partly 
obliterated  to  make  way  for  a  theology  that  the 
scholars  despised.  Popes  and  cardinals  themselves, 
indeed,  were  commonly  held  in  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries  to  care  little  about  theology  and  to 
know  less — a  state  of  things  which  ultimately  aided 
their  heretical  adversaries,  as  did  the  scholarship  they 
helped  to  spread. 

With  the  fall  of  Constantinople  came  the  final 
decisive  impulse  to  new  culture  in  western  Europe. 
Ecclesiastical  hates,  and  those  aroused  by  the 


29G  MEDIEVAL  CHKISTIANITY. 

crusading  conquest  of  Byzantium,  had  for  centuries 
sundered  the  Greek  and  Latin  worlds  more  com- 
pletely than  even  those  of  Christian  Europe  and 
Islam,  setting  up  a  Chinese  wall  where  paganism, 
albeit  by  fatal  means,  had  effected  mutual  intercourse. 
But  on  the  capture  of  Constantinople  by  the  Turks  in 
1452,  numbers  of  despairing  Greek  scholars  sought 
refuge  in  the  west,  and  were  eagerly  welcomed  by 
students  who  desired  Greek,  not  to  acquire  the  theology 
of  the  Byzantines,  but  to  read  in  the  original  the  great 
pagan  masters.  Thenceforth  the  forces  of  culture  in 
Europe  became  too  strong  for  the  forces  of  repression. 
It  was  thus  by  a  return  to  the  thought  and  science  of 
buried  paganism  that  Christian  civilisation  so-called 
was  put  on  a  progressive  footing.  So  long  as  Aristotle, 
known  through  Latin  translations  made  from  the 
Arabic,  was  a  university  text-book  for  students  of 
theology  under  ecclesiastical  supervision,  he  was  but 
a  modified  instrument  of  dogmatism ;  and  his  limita- 
tions were  made  the  measure  of  knowledge  even  as  the 
Bible  had  been.  With  the  free  return  to  the  recovered 
lore  of  free  Greece  came  a  new  spirit  of  freedom, 
destined  to  break  down  the  reign  of  all  dogmatisms, 
and  to  build  up  a  lore  of  its  own. 

§  4.  Religion  and  Art. 

On  one  line,  happily,  the  Church  of  the  Renais- 
sance was  able  to  do  a  service  to  civilisation  while 
following  its  own  ends.  Among  the  apophthegms 
which  stand  critical  tests  is  that  to  the  effect  that 
art  has  always  been  the  handmaid  of  religion.  So 
true  is  it  that  even  Protestant  Christianity,  which  at 
its  start  set  its  face  against  all  pictorial  expression  of 


RELIGION  AND  ART.  297 

religious  ideas,  is  in  our  own  time  visibly  much 
indebted  to  art  for  the  preservation  and  cultivation  of 
religious  sentiment. 

In  antiquity,  save  in  the  anti-idolatrous  cults, 
religion  had  been  the  great  patron  of  imitative  art, 
inasmuch  as  it  made  the  most  constant  economic 
demand  for  sculptures  and  paintings.  This  law  held 
good  from  Hindostan  to  Rome ;  and  even  Judaism 
and  Mazdeism  had  perforce  to  subsidise  architecture. 
That  common  need  for  splendid  temples  preserved 
architectural  ideals  in  Byzantium  when  the  art  of  the 
higher  sculpture  had  utterly  disappeared  ;  and  as  the 
loss  of  skill  in  sculpture,  no  less  than  the  old  aversion 
to  statues  as  symbols  of  paganism,  prevented  activity 
on  that  line,  the  Byzantines  devoted  themselves  to 
the  carving  and  painting  of  wooden  icons,  and  to 
mosaics,  pictures,  and  manuscript  illuminations,  for 
religious  purposes.  The  results  were  constrained  and 
unprogressive ;  but  hence,  in  the  Dark  Ages,  and 
during  the  short-lived  Latin  empire  of  Constantinople, 
came  the  models  for  the  first  pictorial  art  of  Italy ; 
and  from  that  beginning,  under  the  economic 
encouragement  given  by  a  priesthood  whose  wealth 
was  always  increasing,  and  whose  churches  and 
palaces  constantly  gained  in  splendour,  came  the 
immense  artistic  flowering  of  the  Renaissance.  After 
the  Reformation  had  cut  off  half  the  sources  of  Italian 
ecclesiastical  wealth,  and  Spanish  rule  had  begun 
to  ruin  industry,  the  artistic  life  of  Italy  rapidly 
died  away ;  even  as  in  Protestant  Holland,  where 
the  economic  demand  was  non-clerical,  coming  mainly 
from  a  wealthy  trading  class  who  sought  portraits  and 
secular  pictures,  there  was  a  rapid  decline  from  the 
period  of  political  and^economic  contraction. 


298  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

It  needed,  however,  the  conditions  of  free  civic  life, 
such  as  prevailed  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  Renais- 
sance, to  raise  ecclesiastical  art  from  the  bondage  of 
convention  in  which  it  had  been  kept  by  the  Byzantine 
Church,  as  by  the  priesthood  of  ancient  Egypt.  It 
was  the  immense  intellectual  competition  of  the 
Italian  States  in  their  period  of  free  growth,  and  even 
under  their  native  despots,  that  bred  artistic  spirits 
such  as  those  who  perpetually  widened  the  bounds  of 
the  arts  of  colour  and  form,  from  Giotto  to  Michel 
Angelo  and  Titian. 

Under  equivalent  conditions  took  place  the  great 
evolution  of  architectural  art  in  France  and  northern 
Europe.  It  was  mainly  the  economic  demand  of  the 
Church  that  evolved  the  admirable  architecture  called 
"  Gothic  " — a  misnomer  applied  by  the  later  artificial 
taste  which  could  see  beauty  only  in  classical  sym- 
metry, and  disdained  the  wild  grace  and  power  of  the 
medieval  architecture  as  mere  barbarism.  It  was 
really  a  special  development  of  artistic  faculty. 
Modern  fancy  has  ascribed  to  the  guilds  of  cathedral- 
builders  on  the  one  hand  a  passion  for  occult  lore, 
supposed  to  be  the  source  of  the  modern  mummery 
of  "  Freemasonry,"  and  on  the  other  hand  a  deep 
religious  feeling,  of  which  the  cathedral  is  supposed 
to  be  the  expression.  How  far  this  is  from  the  truth 
may  be  gathered  from  a  closer  study  of  their  sculp- 
tures in  many  of  the  older  cathedrals  and  churches, 
which  reveal  not  only  a  riotous  irreverence  and 
indecency,  but  at  times  a  positive  derision  for  the 
faith.  Nonetheless,  organised  Christianity  had,  by 
its  demand  for  their  work,  provided  a  wonderful 
artistic  environment  for  a  cult  which  could  no  more 
than  those  of  antiquity  evolve  a  humanity  worthy  of  it. 


CHAPTER 


BYZANTINE    CHRISTIANITY. 

THE  history  of  Christian  Byzantium,  from  the  rise  of 
Islam  to  the  fall  of  Constantinople,  is  the  typical 
instance  of  mental  stagnation.  During  a  period  of  eight 
hundred  years,  even  friendly  research  professes  to 
discover  in  Byzantine  annals  only  one  writer's  name 
per  century  which  posterity  can  be  expected  to  keep  in 
memory.  Such  a  history  is  the  complete  confutation 
of  the  common  theory  that  Christianity  is  in  itself  a 
force  of  progress  ;  but  once  more  we  must  take  note 
that  Christianity  was  not  the  determining  cause  of 
the  arrest.  Civilisation  progresses  by  the  contact 
of  cultures  ;  and  where  that  is  lacking  the  results 
are  the  same  under  all  religious  systems.  Byzantium 
presents  the  symptoms  of  China,  because,  like  China, 
it  was  politically  and  intellectually  isolated  for  a 
whole  era,  under  a  centralised  government  which 
imposed  certain  norms  of  life  and  doctrine,  and  pre- 
vented the  variation  and  mutual  reaction  that  would 
otherwise  have  arisen  between  its  provinces.  Only 
inasmuch  as  it  promoted  and  consecrated  such  a 
system  was  Christianity  a  primary  factor  in  the 
resulting  arrest  of  growth.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
lent  itself  alternately  to  division  and  to  petrifaction. 
In  the  period,  to  the  end  of  the  seventh  century, 
dogma  was  a  source  of  strife  which  dismembered  the 

299 


300  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

empire  :  in  the  period  of  contracted  empire,  face  to 
face  with  the  Moslem  enemy,  religious  feeling  tended 
to  prevent  further  disruption,  very  much  as  the  Church 
had  been  unified  in  the  pagan  period  by  persecution. 

Within  the  contracted  empire,  however,  there  was 
no  durable  progress.  Its  condensed  annals  give  a 
picture  which  even  the  barbarian  west  could  not 
outgo.  In  the  period  from  668  to  716  seven  emperors 
were  dethroned,  four  of  them  were  put  to  death,  one 
(while  drunk)  had  his  eyes  put  out,  and  two  more,  in 
addition  to  two  brothers  of  emperors,  had  their  noses 
cut  off — punishments  which  in  Byzantium  became 
classical.  Under  Christianity  there  was  certainly 
more  cruelty  and  demoralisation  than  under  early 
Islam.  The  Caliph  Aboubekr  had  given  to  his  fol- 
lowers those  injunctions  :  "Be  just :  the  unjust  never 
prosper.  Be  valiant:  die  rather  than  yield.  Be 
merciful :  slay  neither  old  men,  children,  nor  women. 
Destroy  neither  fruit-trees,  grain,  nor  cattle.  Keep 
your  word,  even  to  your  enemies."  Only  those  who 
refused  either  to  become  Moslems  or  to  pay  tribute 
were  to  be  slain.  In  that  spirit  the  Caliph  Moawyah 
rebuilt  their  church  for  the  Christians  of  Edessa. 
Fifty  years  later,  Justinian  II.  invaded  Armenia,  and 
on  driving  out  the  Saracens  seized  and  sold  as  slaves 
the  majority  of  the  Christian  inhabitants,  reducing 
the  richest  parts  of  the  country  to  desert.  And  when, 
after  he  had  been  dethroned,  deprived  of  his  nose, 
and  exiled  for  ten  years,  he  returned  to  triumph  over 
his  enemies,  the  Greek  populace  applauded  him  with 
Biblical  quotations  as  he  sat  in  the  circus  with  his  feet 
on  his  rivals'  necks. 

The  advent  of   Leo  the  Isaurian  (716)  marks  an 
epoch  in  Byzantine  history.     Acting  as  head  of  the 


BYZANTINE  CHRISTIANITY. 


301 


church,  the  established  function  of  the  eastern 
emperors,  he  set  himself  to  check  idolatry,  first  by 
ordering  that  the  pictures  in  the  churches  should  be 
placed  high  enough  to  prevent  the  people  from  kissing 
them.  On  this  issue  the  populace  and  the  lower 
clergy  united  against  him,  to  the  length  of  rebellion  ; 
and  he  in  turn  made  his  edicts  more  stringent.  What- 
ever may  have  been  his  motives,  he  acted  on  prin- 
ciples afterwards  founded  on  by  Protestantism  ;  and 
during  a  century  and  a  half — save  for  a  relapse  from 
787  to  813,  in  which  the  government  was  sometimes 
tyrannically  orthodox  and  sometimes  tolerant — his- 
views  were  more  or  less  fully  maintained  by  suc- 
ceeding rulers.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that,  as 
repeatedly  happened  centuries  later  in  the  west,  a 
long  period  of  religious  strife  through  the  whole  State 
created  a  party  in  favour  of  complete  tolerance  and 
liberty  of  conscience.  But  though  they  so  far  gained 
ground  as  to  convert  the  emperor  Nicephorus  I* 
(802-811),  who  employed  some  of  them  in  his 
ministry,  and  treated  both  Paulician  heretics  and 
rebels  with  unusual  tolerance,  there  was  no  such 
intellectual  life  in  Byzantium  as  could  long  sustain 
a  tolerant  policy.  It  is  a  miscalculation  to  suppose, 
as  some  do,  that  the  triumph  of  iconoclasm  would 
have  meant  the  regeneration  of  the  empire.  To  work 
regeneration  there  were  needed  further  forces  of 
variation,  since  Islam  stagnated  without  image-worship 
as  Byzantium  did  with  it. 

Leo  the  Armenian  (813-820),  who  was  averse  to 
image-worship  but  desirous  of  keeping  the  peace,  was 
forced  by  the  zeal  of  the  iconoclastic  party  and  the 
obstinacy  of  the  orthodox  to  resume  an  iconoclastic 
policy.  Under  such  circumstances  numbers  of  the 


302  MEDIEVAL  CHBISTIANITY. 

clergy  became  temporisers,  leaving  to  the  monks  the 
fanatical  defence  of  images ;  and  as  Leo  himself  was 
capable,  with  the  approbation  of  both  parties,  of  an 
act  of  the  grossest  treachery  toward  his  enemy  the 
king  of  the  Bulgarians,  it  is  clear  that  neither  icono- 
clasm  nor  image-worship  was  raising  the  plane  of 
morals.  Significantly  enough,  it  was  at  the  beginning 
of  the  reign  of  Michael  the  Drunkard  (842-867),  who 
was  professedly  orthodox,  but  openly  burlesqued  the 
ceremonies  of  the  church,  that  image-worship  was 
definitely  restored,  under  the  regency  of  his  fanatical 
mother,  Theodora.  The  great  majority  were  weary 
of  the  strife,  and  many  of  the  iconoclasts  had  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  relative  sanity  in  religion  was 
not  worth  fighting  for.  For  the  rest,  Michael  was 
finally  assassinated,  as  Leo  the  Armenian  had  been 
before  him. 

It  was  at  this  period  that  Photius,  the  most  learned 
man  of  the  Dark  Ages,  became  Patriarch  of  Con- 
stantinople, in  the  teeth  of  the  opposition  of  the  Pope 
of  Kome,  who  after  the  formal  restoration  of  image- 
worship  had  been  appealed  to,  as  a  champion  of 
orthodoxy,  for  the  decision  of  some  official  disputes 
in  the  Eastern  church.  After  his  position  was  assured, 
Photius  effectually  fought  the  Roman  claims,  com- 
pleting the  schism  between  the  churches ;  and  in  his 
own  sphere  he  did  much  for  the  preservation  of 
learning,  and  even  something  for  the  cultivation  of 
judgment.  In  theology,  it  is  admitted  by  one  of 
another  school,  "  he  made  use  of  his  own  reason  and 
sagacity  ";  and  he  is  notable,  in  his  period  and  place, 
for  having  reached  the  idea  that  earthquakes  might 
not  be  divine  portents.  But  Photius  is  the  high- 
water-mark  of  Byzantine  intelligence ;  and  no  m  an 


BYZANTINE  CHRISTIANITY. 


303 


of  equal  capacity  and  culture  seems  to  have  arisen 
during  the  six  remaining  centuries  of  the  eastern 
empire. 

It  is  impossible,  indeed,  to  say  whether  there  was 
not  in  Byzantium,  behind  the  official  scenes,  a  higher 
intellectual  life.  It  was  from  Michael  II.  ("  the 
Stammerer '')  that  Louis  the  son  of  Charlemagne 
received  (824)  the  copy  of  the  writings  of  Dionysius 
"  the  Areopagite,"  from  which  was  made  the  first 
Latin  translation  ;  and  as  this  writer  had  a  great 
influence  on  John  Scotus,  who  may  even  have  acquired 
his  first  knowledge  of  him  from  that  very  copy,  which 
he  translated  afresh,  it  may  be  that  in  Greece  also, 
where  Dionysius  was  much  admired  and  studied 
among  the  monks,  there  were  deep  thinkers  whom  he 
stimulated.  But  whereas  even  Scotus  could  reach 
few  in  the  west,  any  higher  thought  there  may  have 
been  in  the  east  remained  entirely  latent.  Learning 
fared  better.  After  Photius,  the  East  produced  for 
posterity  the  important  Lexicon  of  Suidas,  which 
apparently  belongs  to  the  tenth  century ;  and  in  the 
twelfth  Eustathius  of  Thessalonica  produced  his 
valuable  commentary  on  Homer.  But  the  populace 
in  the  East  was  as  ignorant  and  superstitious  as  that 
of  the  west ;  and  the  system  of  caste  occupations  or 
hereditary  pursuits  made  eastern  learning  even  a  less 
communicable  influence  than  western. 

In  the  political  life  there  were  fluctuations ;  and 
though  in  all  ages  alike  there  were  dethronements, 
assassinations,  and  mutilations  of  emperors  and  of 
their  suspected  relatives,  the  time  of  the  Basilian 
dynasty  (867-1057)  was  one  of  relative  stability,  with 
even  some  military  glory,  and  temporary  recovery 
or  expansion  of  territory,  as  against  Saracens  and 


304  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

Bulgarians.  Still  the  sum-total  of  each  century's 
life  was  practically  stagnation.  Under  emperors, 
empresses,  or  eunuchs,  the  administration  was  sub- 
stantially the  same.  Alien  elements,  which  might 
under  other  conditions  have  generated  new  life,  had 
entered  the  empire  with  the  Slavonians,  whose  race, 
after  occupying  Dalmatia  and  Illyricum  at  the  wish 
of  Heraclius  in  the  seventh  century,  flourished  and 
multiplied,  and  invaded  the  Paloponnesus  early  in 
the  ninth.  The  later  iconoclastic  emperors  were 
vigorous  enough  to  bring  them  to  submission  ;  but 
Eoman  imperialism  and  Christian  ecclesiasticism 
between  them  undid  all  progressive  influences,  just 
as  the  policy  of  militarism  and  fanaticism  finally 
did  among  the  Saracens. 

The  attempts  at  change,  indeed,  were  many.  Con- 
spiracies were  chronic ;  and  when  one  failed  the 
conspirators  were  blinded  according  to  Byzantine 
rule  ;  emperors  on  the  other  hand  were  often 
unmade ;  but  the  political  machinery  remained  the 
same.  In  the  period  to  Heraclius,  the  ruling  class 
at  Constantinople  were  mainly  of  Roman  stock; 
under  the  Iconoclastic  emperors,  who  were  Asiatics, 
it  was  mainly  Asiatic ;  later  it  became  substantially 
Greek,  as  each  party  drove  out  the  other ;  but  all 
alike  maintained  the  old  imperial  ideals.  "  Men  of 
every  rank,"  says  the  historian  Finlay,  "  were  confined 
within  a  restricted  circle,  and  compelled  to  act  in  one 
unvarying  manner.  Within  the  imperial  palace,  the 
incessant  ceremonial  was  regarded  as  the  highest 

branch  of  human  knowledge Among  the  people  at 

large,  though  the  curial  system  of  castes  had  been 
broken  down,  still  the  trader  was  fettered  to  his  cor- 
poration, and  often  to  his  quarter  or  street, amidst 


BYZANTINE  CHRISTIANITY.  305 

men  of  the  same  profession No  learning,  no  talent, 

and  no  virtue  could  conduct  either  to  distinction  or 
wealth,  unless  exercised  according  to  the  fixed  formulas 
that  governed  the  state  and  the  church.  Hence  even 
the  merchant,  who  travelled  over  all  Asia,  and  who 
supported  the  system  by  the  immense  duties  that  he 
furnished  to  the  government,  supplied  no  new  ideas 
to  society,  and  perhaps  passed  through  life  without 
acquiring  any." 

Yet  such  is  the  strength  of  the  biological  force  of 
variation  that  even  in  religion  there  was  chronic 
heresy.  We  have  seen,  in  tracing  the  history  of 
western  belief  in  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries, 
how  a  strenuous  anti-clerical  heresy,  the  Paulician, 
had  arisen  and  thriven  in  the  east,  defying  the 
bloodiest  persecution,  and  developing  in  the  old 
fashion  into  a  force  of  hostility  to  the  empire.  After 
that  heresy  had  been  thus  fatally  expelled,  others 
arose.  In  the  twelfth  century,  under  the  theological 
emperor  Manuel  Comnenus,  there  was  a  return  to 
the  inexhaustible  problem  of  the  incarnation  :  men 
disputed  as  to  how  God  could  at  the  same  time  be  a 
sacrifice  and  the  offerer  thereof ;  and  the  emperor 
himself,  convicted  of  heresy,  came  round  to  the 
orthodox  view,  whatever  it  was.  Soon  the  dispute 
took  a  new  form,  over  the  awkward  text  "  My  Father 
is  greater  than  I  ";  and  the  emperor  gave  an  orthodox 
decision  which  he  engraved  on  tables  of  stone  for  the 
great  church,  denouncing  death  on  all  who  taught 
otherwise.  As  usual,  the  dispute  was  not  settled,  and 
the  later  emperor  Andronicus  was  fain  to  take  down 
the  tablets  and  forbid  all  discussion  on  the  subject. 
All  the  while,  anti-clerical  and  anti-ceremonial  heresy 
persisted  ;  and  the  burning  alive  of  the  monk  Basil, 


306  MEDIEVAL  CHRISTIANITY. 

founder  of  the  Gnostic  Bogomiles,  did  not  mend 
matters.  The  brutal  sack  and  pillage  of  Constantinople 
by  the  Latin  crusaders,  and  the  generation  of  western 
tyranny  that  followed,  did  much  to  unify  the  Greek 
people  of  the  thirteenth  century  in  a  common  hatred 
of  their  masters,  whom  they  at  length  cast  out ;  but 
this,  again,  meant  no  new  intellectual  life.  To  the 
last,  there  was  a  sufficiency  of  static  Greek  scholar- 
ship to  preserve  much  of  the  ancient  heritage  for  the 
time  when  the  Turks  should  scatter  it  through  the 
west ;  but  no  Byzantine  name  belongs  to  the  roll  of 
light-givers  in  the  age  of  the  Renaissance. 

If  we  search  for  the  bearing  of  religion  on  the 
popular  life  during  the  thousand  years  of  the  eastern 
empire,  the  conclusion  will  remain  very  much  the  ' 
same  as  that  reached  by  a  study  of  the  conditions  of 
the  first  centuries  of  established  Christianity.  Bound- 
less credulity,  boundless  superstition,  and  zealous 
idolatry,  are  the  standing  features  from  the  seventh 
century  onwards.  Conduct  was  substantially  what  it 
had  been  in  pagan  times  ;  and  whatever  might  be  the 
legal  status  of  those  born  in  slavery,  the  myriads  of 
captives  enslaved  in  every  successful  war  can  have 
had  no  better  lot  than  those  of  the  ancient  world. 
Doubtless  the  lot  of  the  Byzantine  people  in  the  mass 
was  better  than  that  of  the  westerns  of  the  Dark 
Ages  insofar  as  they  were  artisans  living  under  a 
regular  government;  but  in  the  rural  districts  and 
outlying  regions  they  can  have  fared  no  better,  either 
in  peace  or  war.  When  the  Saracens  wrested  Crete 
and  Sicily  from  Byzantium  early  in  the  ninth  century, 
the  majority  of  the  inhabitants  seem  to  have  been 
little  loth  to  turn  Moslems.  "  In  almost  every  case  in 
which  the  Saracens  conquered  Christian  nations," 


BYZANTINE  CHRISTIANITY.  307 

says  the  Christian  historian  already  quoted,  "  history 
unfortunately  reveals  that  they  owed  their  success 
chiefly  to  the  favour  with  which  their  progress  was 
regarded  by  the  mass  of  the  people.  To  the  disgrace 
of  most  Christian  governments,  it  will  be  found  that 
their  administration  was  more  oppressive  than  that  of 
the  Arabian  conquerors."  We  have  already  seen  that 
both  the  Arabs  and  the  Mongols,  as  apart  from  the 
Turks,  were  by  far  the  more  tolerant.  When  the 
Byzantine  empire  recovered  Crete  in  the  tenth  century, 
its  rulers  planned  to  exterminate  the  Saracen  popula- 
tion ;  and  though  the  purpose  was  not  carried  out, 
the  Saracens  who  remained  were  reduced  to  virtual 
serfdom. 

Of  the  moral  and  intellectual  unprogressiveness  of 
Byzantium  we  may  say,  finally,  that  the  Christian 
State,  like  those  of  the  Saracens  and  the  Turks,  was  in 
large  measure  kept  stationary  precisely  by  the  relation 
of  constant  strife  set  up  by  the  existence  of  the  enemy. 
Each  was  the  curse  of  its  antagonist.  And  Chris- 
tianity did  no  more  to  raise  men  above  that  deadlock 
of  enmity  than  did  Islam ;  nay,  the  further  factor  of 
Byzantine  isolation  represented  by  the  rupture  between 
the  Greek  and  Latin  churches  was  a  special  product 
of  the^Christian  system. 


PART  IV,— MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE   REFORMATION. 

§  1.  Moral  and  Intellectual  Forces. 

As  early  as  the  eleventh  century,  we  have  seen  at 
work  in  both  eastern  and  western  Europe  movements 
of  popular  resistance  at  once  to  the  religious  claims 
and  the  financial  methods  of  the  Christian  priesthood, 
to  the  dogmas  on  which  those  claims  and  methods 
proceeded,  and  to  the  ceremonialism  which  backed 
them.  Early  in  the  thirteenth  century,  the  region  in 
which  such  heresy  had  most  largely  spread  was 
systematically  warred  upon  by  armies  called  out  by 
the  Church,  and  there  the  movement  was  destroyed  by 
many  years  of  bloodshed,  the  once  heretical  territory 
becoming  a  centre  of  orthodox  fanaticism.  The 
scattered  seeds,  however,  bore  fresh  fruit,  and  in  the 
fourteenth  century  movements  of  thought,  some  of 
which  were  no  less  deeply  heretical,  and  many  no  less 
anti-hierarchical,  went  far  in  the  west  and  north  of 
Europe.  Still  they  failed  to  effect  any  revolution ; 
and  in  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  the  Church 
of  Rome,  corrupt  as  its  rulers  were,  might  have  seemed 
to  calculating  observers  more  surely  established  than 
ever  before.  It  had  passed  through  a  long  and 

308 


MORAL  AND  INTELLECTUAL  FORCES.       309 

scandalous  series  of  papal  schisms,  and  its  power 
seemed  strengthened  by  reunion  after  a  century  and  a 
half  of  divisions. 

Heretical  forces  of  course  there  were,  several  of  the 
leading  sects  of  the  fourteenth  century  being  still 
active,  especially  in  Germany  and  the  Low  Countries. 
Thus  the  Brethren  and  Sisters  of  the  Free  Spirit,  who 
leant  to  pantheism  in  doctrine  and  to  some  degree  of 
antinomianism  in  practice,  persisted  in  spite  of  per- 
secution, as  did  the  kindred  movements  of  Beghards  or 
Turlupins;  members  of  these  and  similar  sects  even 
found  shelter  in  the  lower  order  of  the  Franciscans, 
Dominicans,  and  Augustinians ;  and  in  Italy  and 
France  the  heretical  Franciscan  Fraticelli  still  obsti- 
nately fought  the  papacy,  which  followed  them  up 
with  fire  and  sword.  But  there  are  no  signs  that  the 
papacy  had  thus  far  been  shaken ;  and  more  than  one 
anti-clerical  movement  had  died  out.  Thus  in 
England  Lollardry  had  virtually  disappeared  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  VI.;  and  in  Bohemia,  where  the 
"Wiclifian  John  Huss  in  the  opening  years  of  the 
century  had  preached  vehemently  against  clerical  and 
papal  abuses,  not  only  had  he  been  burned  alive  on 
the  sentence  of  the  Council  of  Constance  (1415),  in 
iniquitous  disregard  of  the  emperor's  letter  of  safe- 
conduct,  but  his  followers,  after  long  and  savage  wars 
in  which  great  numbers  were  burned  alive  and  they 
themselves  broke  up  into  two  sections,  had  finally 
been  either  reconciled  to  the  church  or  reduced  to 
peaceful  nonconformity. 

Nowhere  could  the  anti-papal  spirit  be  said  to  be 
dangerously  strong  ;  nor  was  it  much  regarded  by  the 
popes.  A  little  earlier  than  Huss,  Matthew  of 
Cracow,  Bishop  of  Worms,  had  written  "  On  the 


310  THE  KEFOKMATION. 

Pollutions  (cle  squaloribus)  of  the  Roman  Curia,"  but 
he  was  never  molested.  It  does  not  seem,  further, 
that  the  cause  of  the  cruel  sentence  on  Huss  was  so 
much  his  attacks  on  the  clergy  or  the  papacy  as  the 
enmities  he  had  aroused  (1)  in  what  passed  for  philo- 
sophy (he  being  a  zealous  "  Realist,"  and  as  such  hated 
by  the  Nominalists,  who  were  strong  in  the  Council), 
and  (2)  on  the  side  of  nationality,  he  being  a  Czech 
nationalist  and  a  vehement  enemy  of  the  German 
race  and  interest,  which  also  were  present  in  force. 
And  though  the  cruelty  and  the  gross  treachery  of  the 
sentence  on  Huss,  and  the  infliction  of  the  same  cruel 
death  on  Jerome  of  Prague  in  the  following  year, 
roused  a  furious  revolt  among  the  Hussites,  they  awoke 
no  general  sympathy  in  Europe. 

As  the  fifteenth  century  wore  on,  fresh  movements 
of  anti-papal  feeling  rose,  and  some  were  put  down. 
A  professor  of  theology  at  the  university  of  Erfurt, 
John  of  Wesel  (not  to  be  confounded  with  John 
Wessel,  also  a  critical  reformer  in  theology,  but  never 
persecuted),  began  about  the  middle  of  the  century  to 
write  against  indulgences ;  and  when  he  became  a 
popular  preacher  at  Mayence  and  Worms  he  carried 
his  criticism  further.  The  result  was  that  in  1479  he 
was  arraigned  before  a  "court  of  Inquisition"  at 
Mayence  and  cast  into  prison,  where  he  soon  died. 
Wesel  was  a  Nominalist,  and  as  such  was  no  less 
hated  by  the  Realists  than  Huss  had  been  by  the 
Nominalists ;  but  since  he  was  also  denounced  as  a 
Hussite,  and  was  further  an  extremely  free-tongued 
assailant  of  the  hierarchy,  there  is  reason  in  his  case 
to  suppose  a  professional  animus.  Still  there  was  no 
formidable  movement.  Before  John  of  Wesel,  the 
Netherlander  John  of  Goch,  Confessor  to  the  Nuns  of 


MORAL  AND  INTELLECTUAL  FOKCES.      311 

Tabor  (d.  1475),  had  opposed  both  monasticism  and 
episcopal  power ;  but  he  was  associated  with  the 
orthodox  Brethren  of  the  Common  Lot,  and  had 
criticised  the  antinomian  morals  of  the  Brethren  of 
the  Free  Spirit,  so  that  he  hardly  figured  as  a 
heretic.  John  Wessel,  again  (d.  1489),  anticipated, 
as  Luther  declared,  most  of  the  latter's  doctrines  ;  but 
though  he  wandered  in  France  and  Italy,  studied  and 
taught  at  Paris,  and  was  a  professor  at  Heidelberg, 
exercising  a  wide  influence,  he  never  roused  enmity 
enough  to  bring  him  into  trouble.  On  the  other 
hand,  Savonarola's  strong  dissentient  movement  at 
Florence,  as  we  have  already  noted,  fell  with  him  in  1498. 
All  the  while,  nevertheless,  there  was  proceeding 
an  intellectual  process  which  had  not  before  been 
possible — a  permeation  of  the  northern  part  of  the 
continent,  especially  Germany,  by  a  spirit  of  com- 
paratively orthodox  anti-Eomanism,  based  on  a 
growing  scholarship,  which  found  in  the  sacred 
books  themselves  a  basis  for  its  course.  The  scholarly 
impulse  had  come  from  Italy,  where  it  had  been 
fostered  by  the  papacy  itself ;  but  in  the  north  it  had 
a  different  social  and  political  effect.  In  Germany 
and  the  Netherlands,  to  begin  with,  elementary  edu- 
cation was  gaining  ground.  The  Brethren  of  the 
Common  Lot  had  done  much  for  it,  and  many  of 
their  pupils  started  fresh  schools,  which  weakened 
the  first,  but  carried  further  their  work.  At  the  same 
time  sprang  up  new  universities  ;  those  of  Tubingen, 
Mayence,  Wittemberg,  and  Frankfort-on-the-Oder 
being  founded  between  1477  and  1506.  In  the  higher 
Biblical  scholarship,  further,  there  had  begun  a  new 
era.  Laurentius  Valla's  "  Notes  on  the  New  Testa- 
ment "  created  a  spirit  of  scholarlike  criticism  ;  and 


312  THE  REFORMATION. 

John  Reuchlin,  after  a  training  in  France,  began  in 
Germany  an  equally  vigorous  movement  of  Hebrew 
scholarship  by  producing  the  first  Hebrew  grammar. 
Numbers  of  educated  men  were  now  in  a  position  of 
practical  intellectual  superiority  to  the  great  mass  of 
the  clergy ;  and  all  the  while  the  process  of  trans- 
lating the  New  Testament  or  the  gospels  into  the 
modern  languages  for  the  use  of  the  unlearned  was 
going  on  in  all  the  more  civilised  countries.  There 
were  German  translations  before  Luther ;  Wiclif's 
versions  had  been  current  in  England  among  the 
Lollards ;  and  French  and  Italian  versions  had  been 
made  by  several  hands  in  the  fifteenth  century.  The 
important  result  was  that  an ti- clerical  heresy  began 
to  claim  to  be  the  stricter  orthodoxy,  and  the  church 
could  no  longer  bracket  the  sin  of  anti-clericalism 
with  that  of  rejecting  the  leading  Christian  dogmas. 
Thus,  when  Erasmus  of  Rotterdam  began  with  a  new 
and  remarkable  literary  skill  to  write  Latin  satires  on 
the  old  text  of  the  vices  and  ignorance  of  the  monks 
and  other  clergy,  he  had  such  an  audience  as  no  man 
had  yet  had  on  that  theme.  In  Petrarch's  day,  a 
century  before,  though  he  too  had  exclaimed  like 
every  other  educated  man  at  the  corruption  of  the 
papal  court  and  system,  humanist  literature  was  still 
largely  a  matter  of  exquisite  art  for  art's  sake ;  in 
that  of  Erasmus  it  had  begun  to  handle  the  most 
vital  intellectual  and  moral  interests. 

Yet,  though  such  an  intellectual  ferment  was  a 
condition  precedent  of  the  Reformation,  it  was  not 
the  proximate  cause  of  the  explosion.  The  doctrinal 
movement  is  seen  at  its  strongest  after  Luther's  dis- 
ruptive work  had  been  done,  in  the  allied  movement 
set  up  in  France  by  Calvinism.  More  perhaps  than  in 


POLITICAL  AND  ECONOMIC  FORCES.  313 

Geneva  itself,  the  Huguenot  cause  in  France  was  one 
of  moral  and  intellectual  revolt,  certainly  fanatical 
but  in  large  measure  disinterested.  What  precipi- 
tated the  Reformation  in  Germany  was  the  coalition 
of  the  decisive  economic  interest  of  the  self-seeking 
nobles,  and  the  anti-Roman  national  sentiment  of 
the  people,  with  the  moral  and  doctrinal  appeal  of 
Luther. 

§  2.  Political  and  Economic  Forces. 

Even  the  grievance  of  indulgence- selling,  which 
gave  the  immediate  provocation  to  Luther's  action, 
was  an  economic  as  well  as  a  moral  question.  Many 
of  the  best  Catholics  were  entirely  at  one  with  him 
and  such  of  his  predecessors  as  Wesel  and  Wessel  in 
deploring  and  denouncing  the  form  the  traffic  had 
taken.  The  process  of  farming  out  the  sale  of  indul- 
gences to  districts,  as  governments  farmed  out  the 
taxes,  was  enough  to  stagger  all  men  capable  of 
independent  judgment ;  and  the  expedition  of  the 
Dominican  monk  Tetzel  had  reduced  it  to  something 
like  burlesque.  Yet  it  was  typical  of  what  papal 
administration  had  become.  Archbishop  Albert  of 
Mayence  and  Magdeburg,  who  was  also  margrave  of 
Brandenburg,  owed  the  Pope  the  usual  large  sum  for 
his  investiture,  and  could  not  pay.  The  Pope,  LeoX., 
greatly  needed  money  for  his  building  outlays ;  and 
the  supreme  prince  of  the  church  gave  to  the  lesser 
permission  to  set  up  in  his  province  a  vigorous 
trade  in  indulgences.  For  this  trade  Tetzel  was 
selected,  not  by  the  Pope  but  by  the  Archbishop,  as 
a  notoriously  suitable  tool.  Albert  in  turn  made  a 
financial  arrangement  with  the  great  German  banking 


314  THE  BEFOEMATION. 

house  of  Fuggers,  and  their  agent  accompanied 
Tetzel  to  take  care  of  the  cash.  Thus,  though 
the  transaction  was  strictly  a  German  one,  the  pro- 
cedure was  externally  one  of  bleeding  a  German 
province,  through  its  superstition,  in  the  financial 
interest  of  Eome.  Well-informed  people  knew  that 
the  papal  agent  carried  off  at  least  the  archbishop's 
debt ;  and  others  might  plausibly  surmise  that  there 
had  gone  a  million  thalers  more,  as  the  takings  had 
been  abnormally  great. 

Obviously  the  mass  of  the  citizens  were  super- 
stitious believers,  otherwise  the  traffic  could  not  have 
gone  on  ;  and  Luther  in  his  pulpit  began  merely  by 
opposing  the  abuse  of  the  practice,  not  the  canonical 
principle.  In  absolution,  he  correctly  argued,  there 
were  according  to  the  established  doctrine  three 
elements — contrition,  confession,  and  remission  of 
penalties;  and  indulgences  could  effect  only  the 
third.  He  accordingly  refused  to  absolve  any  on  the 
mere  ground  of  an  indulgence ;  whereupon  Tetzel, 
finding  his  traffic  thus  ostensibly  hampered,  preached 
against  him,  and  the  historic  battle  began.  The 
theses  nailed  to  the  Wittemberg  church  door  by 
Luther  (1517)  did  not  assail  the  Church  or  the  Pope  ; 
they  simply  challenged  on  orthodox  lines  the  abuse 
of  indulgences  ;  and  when  Luther  began  to  publish 
his  views  he  expressed  himself  with  perfect  submis- 
sion to  the  Pope. 

What  won  him  the  support  of  a  vigorous  popular 
party,  albeit  a  minority,  and  of  a  sufficient  section  of 
the  nobility,  was  in  the  first  place  his  courage,  and  in 
the  second  place  the  growing  restiveness  of  the  Ger- 
mans as  such  under  what  was  practically  an  Italian 
domination.  In  past  history,  the  "  Germanic  empire  " 


POLITICAL  AND  ECONOMIC  FORCES.  315 

had  been  wont  to  lord  it  over  Italy  on  feudal  grounds, 
and  it  was  always  a  sore  point  with  many  that  Italy 
none  the  less  received  an  increasing  tribute  from 
Germany  as  from  other  States.  The  blunder  of  the 
Papacy  in  Luther's  case  lay  in  not  realising  how  far 
such  feelings,  in  connection  with  a  fresh  scandal,  might 
go  in  setting  up  a  northern  tide  of  anti-Roman  animus. 
So  long  wont  to  browbeat  all  insubordination,  and  to 
decide  doctrinal  disputes  by  fiat  instead  of  by  per- 
suasion, it  either  prescribed  or  permitted  to  its  agents 
the  usual  tone  in  their  dealings  with  Luther ;  and 
finally  the  Pope  thought  to  clinch  matters  by  a  bull 
(1520)  against  his  doctrines,  giving  him  his  choice 
between  submission  and  excommunication.  His 
defiance,  and  the  act  of  excommunication,  duly  fol- 
lowed, and  the  Protestant  Church  began. 

Even  now  the  Papacy,  witless  of  new  developments, 
could  very  well  suppose  the  new  heresy  transient. 
Charles  V.,  the  new  Emperor,  was  thoroughly  orthodox ; 
and  not  many  of  the  German  nobles  were  ostensibly 
otherwise.  But  Charles  was  under  a  deep  obligation 
to  Frederick  the  Elector  of  Saxony  for  his  election ; 
and  Frederick  was  one  of  those  who  had  begun,  for 
racial  and  financial  reasons,  to  contemplate  "  home 
rule  "  in  matters  ecclesiastical.  Frederick  accordingly 
was  allowed  to  protect  Luther,  whose  courage  in  going 
to  the  Diet  of  Worms,  with  Huss's  fate  in  common 
memory,  further  established  his  popular  influence. 
Manhood  always  loves  manhood.  After  1526,  how- 
ever, the  process  of  the  Reformation  in  Germany  was 
substantially  one  of  wholesale  confiscation  of  church 
lands  and  goods  by  the  nobles,  who  were  thus  irre- 
vocably committed  to  the  cause ;  and  though  Luther 
and  his  more  single-minded  colleagues  were  naturally 


316  THE  KEFOKMATION. 

disgusted,  there  was  no  other  way  in  which  they  could 
have  won,  popular  sympathy  counting  for  nothing  in 
such  a  matter  without  military  force. 

A  rupture  took  place,  finally,  between  the  Emperor 
and  the  new  Medicean  Pope,  Clement  VII.,  over  the 
desperate  politics  of  Italy,  the  Papacy  for  once  taking 
a  national  course  in  resisting  an  imperialist  invasion. 
But  the  invaders  triumphed  ;  Italy  was  overrun  anew  ; 
Rome  was  sacked  (1527)  with  all  the  atrocity  which 
historically  distinguishes  the  Christian  conquests  of 
the  city  from  those  of  the  ancient  Gauls  and  Goths ; 
and  during  the  critical  years  of  the  establishment  of 
Protestantism  the  emperor  was  in  no  mood  to  quarrel 
with  his  German  friends  in  the  interest  of  a  Pope 
whose  friendship  he  could  not  trust.  All  the  political 
conditions  were  thus  abnormally  favourable  to  the 
Lutheran  movement.  At  the  same  time,  every  menace 
from  Rome  led  naturally  to  intensification  of  the 
Lutheran  heresy ;  and  though  it  always  remained 
much  nearer  Catholicism  than  did  Calvinism,  it 
emphasized  more  and  more  its  differences. 

In  the  meantime  the  success  of  the  movement  of 
Zwingli  at  Zurich  had  proved  independently  that  the 
strength  of  the  Reformation  lay  in  its  appeal  to 
economic  interest.  Confiscation  of  the  possessions  of 
the  Church  by  the  municipal  authorities  was  a  first 
step,  and  one  for  which,  once  taken,  the  community 
would  fight  rather  than  revoke  it.  With  signal  unwis- 
dom, the  Roman  curia  had  contrived  to  allot  most  of 
the  Swiss  town  livings  to  Italians,  so  that  the  vested 
interests  were  alien  and  not  local.  The  municipality, 
on  the  other  hand,  sagaciously  pacified  those  interests 
by  guaranteeing  pensions  or  posts  as  teachers  or 
preachers  to  the  whole  twenty-four  canons  of  the 


POLITICAL  AND  ECONOMIC  FORCES.  317 

chapter ;  and  there  and  in  some  other  cantons  the 
economic  Reformation,  thus  effected,  was  permanent. 

In  the  case  of  England,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
primary  factor  in  the  repudiation  of  papal  rule  was 
the  personal  insistence  of  Henry  VIII.  on  a  divorce 
from  his  first  wife,  Catherine  of  Aragon,  the  aunt  of 
the  emperor,  Charles  V.  Henry  was  so  far  from 
being  inclined  to  Protestantism  that  he  caused  to  be 
compiled  by  his  bishops  (1521)  a  treatise  in  reply  to 
Luther,  to  which  he  put  his  name,  thereupon  receiving 
from  Leo  X.  the  title  of  "Defender  of  the  Faith." 
To  the  very  last,  he  burned  doctrinal  Protestants  as 
heretics,  and  despite  revival  of  the  old  Lollard  propa- 
ganda the  country  remained  substantially  Catholic  in 
creed.  But  when  it  came  to  the  king's  demand  for  a 
divorce,  the  Pope,  Clement  VII.,  was  in  a  hopeless 
dilemma,  since  if  he  granted  the  request,  which  he 
was  personally  and  theologically  not  unwilling  to  do, 
he  would  exasperate  the  emperor  Charles,  of  whom 
he  dreaded  to  make  an  irreconcilable  enemy,  besides 
offending  the  whole  Catholicism  of  Spain  and  even 
much  of  that  of  England.  When  once  Henry  decided 
to  take  ecclesiastical  rule  into  his  own  hands,  he  found 
that,  little  as  he  liked  the  new  doctrines,  he  must  in 
his  own  interest  proceed  to  confiscate  church  lands 
and  bestow  the  bulk  of  them  on  adherents,  thereby 
establishing  a  firm  anti-papal  interest.  So  little  way 
did  positive  Protestant  doctrine  make  that  when  his 
daughter  Mary  came  to  the  throne,  though  she  dared 
not  try  to  resume  the  church  lands,  the  people  were 
in  substantial  sympathy  with  her  faith,  and  only  her 
marriage  with  Philip  and  her  persecution  of  heretics 
turned  any  large  number  against  her.  Even  under 
Elizabeth,  it  was  the  new  national  enmity  to  Spain, 


318  THE  KEFOKMATION. 

and  not  religious  propaganda,  that  made  the  bulk  of 
the  people  Protestant  in  creed  and  worship. 

The  process  of  the  Keformation  in  Scotland  clearly 
follows  the  economic  law.  So  late  as  1535  Scotland 
was  so  Catholic  in  belief,  despite  the  usual  grievances 
against  priestly  rapacity  and  luxury,  that  the  parlia- 
ment passed  a  law  forbidding  all  importation  of  the 
writings  of  Luther,  forbidding  discussions  of  his 
"  damnable  opinions."  But  as  soon  as  the  English 
king  by  his  confiscation  of  the  rich  monastery  lands 
(1536-39)  showed  the  Scots  nobles  how  they  might 
enrich  themselves  by  turning  Protestant,  they  began 
to  favour  heresy ;  and  from  the  death  of  the  last 
Catholic  king,  James  V.  (1542),  throughout  the 
minority  of  his  daughter  Mary,  they  protected  the 
reforming  preachers.  In  1543  began  the  wrecking  of 
monasteries  by  mobs  ;  in  1546  was  assassinated 
Cardinal  Beaton,  who  had  taken  active  steps  to  destroy 
heresy  ;  and  though  the  ferocious  war  with  England 
delayed  developments,  as  did  the  regency  of  the 
Queen's  French  mother,  the  preaching  of  Calvinism 
by  John  Knox  and  others  carried  enough  of  the  towns- 
people to  make  easy  the  passing,  in  1560,  of  an  Act 
which  made  Protestantism  the  established  religion  of 
the  country.  As  usual,  by  far  the  greater  part  of  the 
plunder  went  to  the  landowning  class,  who  brazenly 
broke  all  their  promises  of  endowment  to  the  preachers. 
But  the  latter  had  perforce  to  submit,  indignant  as 
they  were ;  and  when  the  young  Catholic  queen  Mary 
arrived  in  1561  she  found  a  Protestant  kingdom,  in 
which  the  most  powerful  class  was  rich  with  church 
spoils.  Again  the  political  and  the  economic  forces 
had  been  the  obviously  determining  factors  in  the 
change. 


POLITICAL  AND  ECONOMIC  FORCES.  319 

Scandinavian  Protestantism,  in  turn,  moved  on  the 
same  line  of  economic  opportunity  and  pressure.  A 
popular  movement  seems  to  have  begun  in  Denmark, 
but  it  was  favoured  by  the  throne ;  and  the  nobles, 
seeing  the  possibilities  of  the  case,  soon  followed ; 
whereupon  King  Christian  III.,  who  ruled  both 
Denmark  and  Norway,  suppressed  Catholicism  with 
the  nobles'  help,  and  confiscated  the  rich  possessions 
of  the  bishops.  In  Sweden,  on  the  other  hand, 
Gustavus  Vasa  took  the  initiative  against  the  clergy, 
who  had  supported  the  Danish  rule  which  he  suc- 
ceeded in  throwing  off;  and  he  naturally  had  with 
him  the  mass  of  the  laity,  especially  when  he  gave 
the  nobles  leave  to  reclaim  the  lands  that  had  been 
granted  by  their  ancestors  to  the  monasteries.  Doc- 
trinal Protestantism  followed  in  the  wake  of  confis- 
cation. 

The  Protestantism  of  Holland,  again,  was  plainly 
the  result  of  the  mismanagement  of  Philip  II.  When 
Protestantism  had  in  other  countries  reached  its 
fullest  extension,  the  Low  Countries  were  still  mainly 
Catholic,  only  a  few  of  the  poorer  classes  having 
changed,  apart  from  the  Anabaptist  movement,  which 
had  a  much  larger  following;  and  the  slaughter  of 
such  heretics  by  the  Inquisition  went  on  for  many 
years  with  the  acquiescence  of  the  middle  and  upper 
orders.  In  the  Netherlands,  the  local  Inquisition, 
conducted  by  natives,  was  positively  more  cruel  than 
that  of  Spain.  It  is  thus  clear  that  there  was  no 
special  bias  to  Protestantism  in  the  "  Teutonic " 
races  as  such.  The  orthodox  Protestant  movement 
entered  Holland  not  from  the  German  but  from  the 
French  side  ;  and  it  needed  not  only  the  ferocity  but 
the  rapacity  of  Alva  to  create  a  permanent  Protestant 


320  THE  EEFOEMATION. 

and  rationalist  movement  among  the  needy  nobility. 
When  the  Protestant  mobs  began  to  resort  to  image- 
breaking  they  put  their  cause  in  great  peril.  The 
real  reason  of  the  slowness  of  the  nobles  to  turn 
Protestant  was,  doubtless,  that  they  had  little  to  gain 
from  plunder  of  their  Church  in  any  case,  it  having 
long  been  abnormally  poor  by  reason  of  the  restrictive 
policy  of  the  Flemish  and  Dutch  feudal  princes  in  the 
past.  When  the  rupture  with  Spain  was  complete, 
the  Church  estates  were  scrupulously  disposed  of  in 
the  public  interest,  Dutch  Protestantism  being  thus 
exceptionally  clean-handed. 

Philip's  attempts  to  enrich  the  priesthood  were 
certainly  part  of  the  provocation  he  gave  his  subjects 
in  the  Netherlands  ;  but  their  resentment  was  at  the 
outset  strictly  political,  not  religious ;  and  it  is  reason- 
able to  say  that  had  he  chosen  to  reside  among  them 
and  conciliate  them  he  could  easily  have  kept  them 
Catholic,  while  in  that  case  Spain  might  very  well 
have  become  Protestant,  and  Dutch  and  Flemish 
resources  would  have  been  turned  against  Spanish 
disaffection.  Even  in  what  remained  the  Spanish 
Netherlands,  Catholicism  entirely  recovered  its  ground. 
The  Teutonic  Charles  V.  had  been  as  rigidly  Catholic 
as  his  predecessors  on  the  Spanish  throne,  and  for  the 
same  reasons,  (1)  that  the  Church  in  his  dominions 
helped  him  and  did  not  thwart  him  ;  and  (2)  that  his 
large  revenues  from  the  Netherlands  made  it  unneces- 
sary for  him  to  plunder  the  Church  as  did  the  Scandi- 
navian kings  and  Henry  VIII. 

In  the  case  of  France,  where  Protestantism  reached 
its  highest  development  in  point  of  intellectual  and 
militant  energy,  but  became  stationary  after  a  genera- 
tion of  desperate  strife,  and  later  decayed,  the  play  of 


POLITICAL  AND  ECONOMIC  FORCES.  321 

political  and  economic  causation  is  little  less  clear. 
There,  as  has  been  said,  there  was  much  less  osten- 
sible pressure  of  wealth-seeking  interest  on  the  side  of 
the  Reformation  than  in  Germany  and  elsewhere ;  yet 
so  far  as  the  nobles  were  concerned  an  economic 
motive  was  certainly  at  work.  At  the  outset  of  his 
reign,  Francis  I.  had  won  from  the  Pope,  practically 
at  the  sword's  point,  the  concession  (1516)  of  the  right 
to  appoint  bishops  and  abbots,  the  papacy  in  return 
receiving  the  annates,  or  first  year's  revenue.  The 
result  was  that  the  Gallican  Church  was  at  least  as 
corrupt  as  any  other  section  of  the  fold,  its  dignities 
being  usually  bestowed  on  court  favourites,  whose 
exactions  exasperated  the  rural  gentry  as  much  as 
those  of  papal  nominees  would  have  done.  The 
throne  being  strong,  however,  and  the  king  having 
no  special  financial  motive  to  go  further,  the  cause  of 
reform  had  no  help  from  his  side.  Had  he  turned 
"  reformer,"  as  he  once  had  some  thought  of  doing, 
he  could  probably  have  made  France  Protestant  with 
less  difficulty  than  Henry  VIII.  met  with  in  England  ; 
but  in  view  of  the  political  divisions  set  up  by 
Lutheranism  in  Germany  he  decided  against  the 
new  propaganda. 

That,  nevertheless,  proceeded.  There  had  always 
been  keen  criticism  of  the  church  in  France ;  and  as 
early  as  1512  there  began  at  Meaux  a  reform  move- 
ment on  substantially  Protestant  lines,  under  the 
auspices  of  the  local  bishop.  He,  however,  was  put 
down  by  the  threats  of  the  college  of  the  Sorbonne, 
the  ecclesiastical  faculty  of  the  university  of  Paris  ; 
an4  the  first  notable  signs  of  anti-Romanism  came 
from  the  Vaudois  of  Provence,  a  small  population 
which  had  been  settled  there  after  the  virtual 

Y 


322  THE  REFORMATION. 

extermination    of    their    predecessors    of    the    same 
name  and  stock  in  the  thirteenth  century,  and  who 
were  latterly  found  to  have  the  same  anti-clerical  ten- 
dencies.    Under  Louis  XII.  the  Church  had  sought 
to  punish  them,  but  he  refused  to  permit  it,  declaring 
them    better  people    than  the    orthodox.      Finding 
themselves  in  sympathy  with  the  Reform  movement, 
they  sent  some  of  their  own  preachers  to  Switzerland 
and   Germany  (1530)    to   learn   from   it,  and   began 
a  similar  propaganda.     Decrees  were  issued  against 
them  in  1535  and  1540,  but  Francis  proposed  to  spare 
them  on  condition  that  they  should  enter  the  Church 
of  Rome.      This  policy  failing,  and   Francis  having 
made  a  treaty  with  Charles  V.,  under  which,  on  papal 
pressure,  he  agreed  to  put  down  heresy,  the  Vaudois 
were  given  up  to  coercion.     There  ensued  a  massacre 
so  vile  (1545)  that  the  king,  now  near  his  end,  was 
revolted   by  it,  declaring  that  his   orders   had  been 
grossly  exceeded.     A  slow  process  of  inquiry,  left  to 
his  son,  dragged  on  for  years,  but  finally  came  to 
nothing. 

The  Vaudois  had  been  nearly  exterminated,  in  the 
old  fashion  ;  but  the  massacre  served  to  proclaim  and 
spread  their  doctrine,  which  rapidly  gained  ground 
among  the  skilled  artizan  class  as  well  as  among  the 
nobles,   the   Swiss   printing-presses    doing   it   signal 
service.     Persecution,  as  usual,  kept  pace  with  propa- 
ganda ;   and  in  1557  Pope  Paul  IV.,  with  the  king's 
approval,  decreed  that  the  Inquisition  should  be  set 
up  in  France,  where  it  had  never  yet  been  established. 
The  legal  "  parliament "  of    Paris,  jealous    for    its 
privileges,   successfully  resisted ;   but  the   Sorbonne 
and    the    Church    carried   on  the  work  of  heretic- 
burning,  till  at  length  the  Huguenots  were  driven 


POLITICAL  AND  ECONOMIC  FOKCES.  323 

to  arms  (1562).  Their  name  had  come  from  that  of 
the  German-speaking  Eidgenossen  ("  oath-fellows  ")  of 
Switzerland ;  but  their  doctrine  was  that  of  Calvin,  who, 
driven  from  France  (1533),  was  now  long  established 
at  Geneva;  and  their  tenacity  showed  the  value  of 
his  close-knit  dogmatism  as  a  political  inspiration. 
Catholic  fanaticism  and  treachery  on  the  one  hand, 
and  Huguenot  intemperance  on  the  other,  brought 
about  eight  furious  civil  wars  in  the  period  1562- 
1594.  The  high-water  mark  of  wickedness  in  that 
generation  was  the  abominable  Massacre  of  St. 
Bartholomew  (1572),  which  followed  on  the  third 
truce,  and  roused  a  new  intensity  of  hatred.  So 
evenly  balanced  were  the  forces  that  only  after  more 
than  twenty  years  of  further  convulsions  was  the 
strife  ended  by  the  politic  decision  of  the  Protestant 
Henry  of  Navarre  to  turn  Catholic  and  so  win  the 
crown  (1594),  on  the  score  that  "  Paris  was  well  worth 
a  Mass."  He  thus  secured  for  his  Protestant  sup- 
porters a  perfect  toleration,  which  he  confirmed  by 
the  Edict  of  Nantes  (1597). 

In  Poland  and  Bohemia,  where  also  Protestantism 
went  far,  on  bases  laid  by  the  old  movements  of  the 
Hussites,  the  process  was  at  first  facilitated,  as  in 
Germany,  by  the  political  conditions ;  and  the 
economic  motive  was  clearly  potent.  The  subsequent 
collapse  and  excision  of  Protestantism  in  those 
countries,  as  in  France,  in  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries,  completes  the  proof  that  for 
the  modern  as  for  the  ancient  world  political  and 
economic  forces  are  the  determinants  of  a  creed's 
success  or  failure,  culture  movements  being,  as  it 
were,  the  force  of  variation  which  they  condition. 


324  THE  REFORMATION. 

§  3.  Social  and  Political  Results. 

On  the  side  of  daily  life,  it  fared  with  Protestantism 
as  with  the  early  Church  :  where  it  was  warred  upon 
it  was  circumspect ;  where  it  had  easier  course  it  was 
lax.  Thus  we  have  the  express  admission  of  Luther 
that  under  Protestantism  he  found  less  spirituality 
around  him  than  there  had  been  under  Romanism ; 
and  there  is  abundant  evidence  that  the  first  effect  of 
the  new  regimen  in  Germany  was  to  promote  what 
Catholic  and  Protestant  teachers  alike  professed  to 
think  the  most  serious  form  of  immorality — sexual 
licence.  In  point  of  fact,  Luther's  own  doctrines  of 
predestination  and  grace  were  a  species  of  unbought 
indulgences,  sure  to  injure  good  morals,  even  apart 
from  the  effect  of  a  free  use  of  the  Bible  as  a  working 
code.  Some  of  Luther's  fellow-preachers  justified 
and  practised  bigamy ;  and  he  and  his  colleagues  not 
only  counselled  Henry  VIII.  to  marry  a  second  time 
without  divorcing  his  first  queen,  but  gave  their 
official  consent,  albeit  reluctantly,  to  such  a  pro- 
ceeding on  the  part  of  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse. 
Among  the  common  people,  the  new  sense  of  freedom 
quickly  gave  a  religious  impulse  to  the  lamentable 
Peasants'  War,  and  later  to  the  so-called  Anabaptist 
movement,  which,  though  it  contained  elements  of 
sincerity  and  virtue  that  are  not  always  acknow- 
ledged, amounted  in  the  main  to  a  movement  of  moral 
and  social  chaos. 

Luther,  during  whose  time  of  hiding  in  the  Wart- 
burg  (1521-1522)  the  new  ferment  began  at  Wittem- 
berg,  came  thither  to  denounce  it  as  a  work  of  Satan ; 
but  it  was  a  sequel  of  his  own  action.  The  new 
leaders,  Storch  and  Miinzer  and  Carlstadt,  had  turned 


SOCIAL  AND  POLITICAL  RESULTS.  325 

as  he  had  advised  to  the  Bible,  and  there  they  found 
texts  for  whatever  they  were  minded  to  try,  from 
image-smashing  to  the  plunder  and  burning  of 
monasteries  and  castles,  and  a  general  effort  at  social 
revolution.  In  all  they  did,  they  declared  and 
believed  they  were  moved  by  the  Spirit  of  God. 
Luther  had  done  this  service  to  Catholicism,  that  his 
course  led  to  the  practical  proof  that  the  Bible,  put  in 
the  hands  of  the  multitude  as  the  sufficient  guide  to 
conduct,  wrought  far  more  harm  than  good.  Peasant 
revolts,  indeed,  had  repeatedly  occurred  in  Germany 
before  his  time,  the  gross  tyranny  of  the  nobles  pro- 
voking them;  but  the  religious  frenzy  of  Miinzer 
gave  to  the  rising  of  1524-25  in  Swabia  and  Franconia, 
though  the  formulated  demands  of  the  insurgents  were 
just  and  reasonable,  a  character  of  wildness  and 
violence  seldom  seen  before.  Luther,  accordingly,  to 
save  his  own  position,  vehemently  denounced  the 
rising,  and  hounded  on  the  nobles  to  its  bloody 
suppression,  a  work  in  which  they  needed  no  urging. 
His  protector,  the  wise  Frederick  of  Saxony,  then  on 
his  deathbed,  gave  no  such  evil  counsel,  but  advised 
moderation,  and  admitted  the  guilt  of  his  order  towards 
the  common  people.  The  end  was,  however,  that  at 
least  100,000  peasants  were  slain  ;  and  the  lot  of  those 
left  was  worse  than  before.  The  later  Anabaptist 
movement,  which  set  up  a  short-lived  republic  (1535) 
in  the  city  of  Minister  in  Westphalia,  and  spread  to 
Holland,  was  too  destitute  of  political  sanity  to  gain 
any  but  visionaries,  and  was  everywhere  put  down 
with  immense  bloodshed. 

Yet  vaster  social  and  political  evils  were  to  come 
from  the  Reformation.  In  1526,  at  the  Diet  of  Spires, 
the  emperor  Charles  V.  called  for  strong  measures 


326  THE  REFORMATION. 

against  Lutheranism,  but  was  firmly  resisted  by  the 
new  Elector  of  Saxony  and  the  other  Lutheran 
princes,  whereupon  the  emperor  waived  his  claim, 
not  caring  to  raise  a  war  in  the  Pope's  interest ;  and 
it  was  agreed  that  each  head  of  a  State  in  the  empire 
should  take  his  own  way  in  regard  to  religion,  his 
subjects  being  at  his  disposal.  It  was  at  this  stage 
that  the  German  Reformation  began  its  most  decisive 
progress.  In  the  next  few  years  the  Papal  party, 
backed  by  the  Emperor,  twice  carried  decrees  rescind- 
ing that  of  1526.  First  came  the  decree  of  the  second 
Diet  of  Spires  (1529).  Against  this  a  formal  protest 
was  made  to  the  emperor  by  the  Lutheran  princes 
and  a  number  of  the  free  imperial  cities  of  Germany 
and  Switzerland,  whence  arose  first  the  title  of 
"  Protestants."  In  1530  the  emperor  convened  a 
fresh  Diet  at  Augsburg,  to  which  the  Lutherans  were 
required  to  bring  a  formal  Confession  of  Faith.  This 
was  framed  on  conciliatory  lines ;  but  the  emperor 
issued  a  fresh  coercive  decree,  whereupon  the  Germans 
formed  the  defensive  League  of  Smalkald,  from  which 
the  Swiss  were  excluded  on  their  refusal  to  sign  the 
Augsburg  Confession.  At  this  stage  the  invasion  of 
Austria  by  the  Turks  delayed  civil  war,  so  that 
Luther  was  able  to  die  in  peace  (1546).  Then  war 
began,  and  the  Protestant  League  was  quickly  and 
thoroughly  overthrown  by  the  emperor.  After  a  few 
years,  however,  the  imperial  tyranny,  exercised 
through  Spanish  troops,  forced  a  revolt  of  the 
Protestant  princes,  who  with  the  help  of  France 
defeated  Charles  (1552).  Now  was  effected  the  Peace 
of  Augsburg  (signed  1555),  which  left  the  princes  as 
before  to  determine  at  their  own  will  whether  their 
States  should  be  Lutheran  or  Catholic,  and  entitled 


SOCIAL  AND  POLITICAL  RESULTS.  327 

them  to  keep  what  church  lands  they  had  confiscated 
before  1552.  No  protection  whatever  was  decreed 
for  Calvinists,  with  whom  the  Lutherans  had  long 
been  at  daggers  drawn,  and  who  had  not  yet  gained 
much  ground  in  Germany. 

Such  a  peace  failed  to  settle  the  vital  question  as 
to  whether  in  future  the  Protestant  princes  could 
make  further  confiscations,  on  the  plea  of  the  con- 
version of  Catholic  bishops  and  abbots  or  otherwise. 
As  the  century  wore  on,  accordingly,  the  princes 
"secularised"  many  more  Church  estates;  and  as 
Protestantism  was  all  the  while  losing  moral  ground 
in  Germany  through  the  adoption  of  Calvinism  by 
several  princes,  and  the  bitter  quarrels  of  the  sects  and 
sub-sects,  the  Catholics  held  the  more  strongly  to  their 
view  of  the  Augsburg  treaty,  which  was  that  all 
bishoprics  and  abbeys  held  directly  from  the  emperor 
were  to  remain  Catholic.  Friction  grew  from  decade 
to  decade,  and,  civic  wisdom  making  no  progress  on 
either  side,  a  number  of  the  Lutherans  and  Calvinists 
at  length  formed  (1608)  a  militant  union,  led  by  the 
Calvinist  prince  Christian  of  Anhalt,  to  defend  their 
gains  ;  and  the  Catholics,  led  by  Maximilian,  Duke  of 
Bavaria,  formed  another.  The  Calvinists  were  the 
chief  firebrands ;  and  Christian  was  bent  on  aggres- 
sion, to  the  end  of  upsetting  the  power  of  the  Catholic 
House  of  Austria. 

The  train,  however,  was  fired  from  Bohemia,  where 
the  Protestant  nobles  were  at  odds  with  their  two 
successive  kings,  Matthias  and  Ferdinand,  both  of 
that  house,  and  both  bent  on  putting  down  Protestant- 
ism on  the  crown  lands.  The  nobles  began  a  revolt 
in  a  brutally  lawless  fashion ;  and  when,  in  a  winter 
pause  of  the  war,  Ferdinand  was  elected  emperor 


328  THE  REFORMATION. 

(1619),  they  deposed  him  from  the  throne  of  Bohemia, 
and  elected  in  his  place  the  Calvinist  prince  Frederick, 
Elector  Palatine  (son-in-law  of  James  I.  of  England), 
who  foolishly  accepted.  The  capable  Maximilian, 
with  Tilly  for  general,  took  the  field  on  behalf  of 
Ferdinand  ;  the  Lutheran  princes  stood  aloof  from 
Frederick,  who  for  his  own  part  had  offended  his 
Lutheran  subjects  by  slighting  their  rites ;  his  few 
allies  could  not  sustain  him,  and  he  was  easily  defeated 
and  put  to  headlong  flight.  At  once  the  leading 
Protestant  nobles  of  Bohemia  were  put  to  death  ;  their 
lands  were  confiscated  ;  the  clergy  of  the  chief  Pro- 
testant body,  the  Bohemian  Brethren,  dating  back  to 
the  time  of  Huss,  were  expelled  in  mass ;  and  Protes- 
tantism in  Bohemia  was  soon  practically  at  an  end. 
Many  of  both  the  Lutheran  and  Calvinist  churches, 
in  their  resentment  at  the  slackness  of  the  German 
Protestant  League,  voluntarily  went  over  to  Catholicism. 
At  the  same  period  the  Protestant  Prince  of  Tran- 
sylvania had  been  in  alliance  with  the  Turks  to  attack 
Vienna  ;  and  the  Protestant  faith  was  thus  discredited 
on  another  side. 

Meantime,  however,  the  Thirty  Years'  War  had 
begun.  Frederick's  general,  Mansfeld,  held  out  for 
him  in  the  Palatinate ;  the  dissolution  of  the  army  of 
the  Protestant  Union  supplied  him  with  fresh  soldiers, 
content  to  live  by  plunder ;  English  volunteers  and 
new  German  allies  joined  ;  and  the  struggle  went  from 
bad  to  worse.  The  failure  or  defeat  of  the  first  Pro- 
testant combatants  brought  others  upon  the  scene  : 
James  of  England  appealed  to  Gustavus  Adolphus  of 
Sweden  and  Christian  IV.  of  Denmark  to  join  him  in 
recovering  the  Palatinate  for  his  son-in-law,  and, 
unable  to  subsidise  Gustavus  as  he  required,  made 


SOCIAL  AND  POLITICAL  RESULTS.  329 

terms  with  Christian,  who  at  once  entered  the  war. 
Thereupon  the  emperor  employed  Wallenstein,  and 
the  Protestants  were  defeated  and  hard  pressed,  till 
the  great  Gustavus  came  to  their  aid.  Under  his 
masterly  leadership  they  regained  their  ground, 
but  could  not  decisively  triumph.  After  his  death 
at  the  battle  of  Liitzen  (1632)  new  developments  took 
place,  France  entering  the  imbroglio  by  way  of  weak- 
ening her  enemies  Austria  and  Spain,  the  two  pillars 
of  the  empire  ;  and  one  era  of  war  passed  into  another 
without  stay  or  respite. 

In  the  course  of  this  inconceivable  struggle  children 
grew  to  middle  age,  and  men  grew  from  youth  to 
grey  hairs  ;  most  of  those  who  began  the  strife  passed 
away  ere  it  had  ended  ;  the  French  Eichelieu  rose  to 
greatness  and  died  ;  and  the  English  Civil  War  passed 
through  nearly  its  whole  course,  a  mere  episode  in 
comparison.  When  at  length  there  was  signed  the 
Peace  of  Westphalia  (1648),  the  German  world  was 
reduced  to  mortal  exhaustion.  The  armies  on  both 
sides  had  been  to  the  common  people  as  the  monstrous 
dragons  of  fable,  bestial  devourers,  dealing  ruin  to 
friend  and  foe  alike.  Every  sack  of  a  city  was  a 
new  triumph  of  cruelty  and  wickedness ;  tortures 
were  inflicted  by  the  mercenaries  which  almost 
redeemed  the  name  of  the  Inquisition  ;  and,  as  of 
old  in  the  Ireland  of  Elizabeth's  day,  peasants  were 
found  dead  with  grass  in  their  mouths.  According 
to  some  calculations,  half  of  the  entire  population  of 
Germany  was  gone ;  and  it  is  certain  that  in  many 
districts  numbers  and  wealth,  man  and  beast,  had 
been  reduced  in  a  much  greater  proportion,  whole 
provinces  being  denuded  of  live  stock,  and  whole 
towns  going  to  ruin.  German  civilisation  had  been 


330  THE  REFORMATION. 

thrown  back  a  full  hundred  years,  morally  and 
materially.  No  such  procession  of  brutality  and  vice 
as  followed  the  armies  of  Tilly  and  Wallenstein  had 
been  seen  since  the  first  Crusade  ;  and  the  genera- 
tion which  had  seen  them  and  been  able  to  survive 
them  was  itself  grown  callous.  Capacity,  culture, 
and  conduct  had  alike  fallen  below  the  levels  of  a 
century  before. 

By  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  were  settled  the 
boundaries  of  the  two  creeds  which  had  thus  battled 
for  a  whole  generation.  In  Germany,  proselytism 
was  at  an  end ;  but  the  States  whose  princes  had 
been  Protestant  remained  so,  they  and  their  Catholic 
neighbours  keeping  the  right  to  impose  their  faith- on 
their  subjects.  Protestantism  had  gained  nothing 
beyond  rooting  Catholicism  more  completely  out  of 
Protestant  States ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
Catholics  had  rooted  heresy  out  of  theirs.  No  racial 
dividing-line  subsisted.  Teutonic  Bavaria  and  Austria 
remained  Catholic,  as  the  five  original  Teutonic 
cantons  of  Switzerland  had  done  from  the  first ;  and 
between  Lutherans  and  Calvinists,  of  whatever  stock, 
there  remained  a  sullen  doctrinal  division.  Bohemia 
had  been  lost  to  Protestantism,  and  Poland  was  now 
far  on  the  way  to  the  same  fate. 

The  diverse  cases  of  Poland  and  France  here  supply 
yet  another  lesson  in  economic  causation.  In  France 
at  the  accession  of  Henry  IV.  the  Protestants  were  a 
very  strong  party,  including  many  of  the  nobles, 
though  a  minority  of  the  nation ;  in  Poland,  at  the 
accession  of  Sigismund  III.  in  1586,  they  were  con- 
siderably stronger.  Within  half-a-century  they  were 
in  full  decadence  in  both  countries,  from  similar  causes. 
Sigismund  (the  cousin  of  Gustavus  Adolphus),  though 


SOCIAL  AND  POLITICAL  RESULTS.  331 

grandson  of  the  Protestant  Gustavus  Vasa  of  Sweden, 
had  been  bred  a  Catholic  with  a  view  to  his  inheriting 
the  Polish  crown  ;  and  from  the  day  of  his  accession 
he  set  himself  to  the  aggrandisement  of  his  creed. 
He  thereby  lost  the  crown  of  Sweden,  but  he  went  far 
to  make  Poland  Catholic  ;  and  the  newly  constituted 
order  of  Jesuits  did  the  rest.  To  the  Polish  crown 
belonged  the  right  of  conferring  life  appointments  to 
which  were  attached  great  tracts  of  crown  land  ;  and 
the  constant  use  of  this  economic  force  for  Catholicism 
during  a  long  reign  began  the  downfall  of  the  Protes- 
tantism of  the  nobility,  who,  though  including  many 
men  of  superior  capacity,  had  been  moved  as  usual  by 
the  economic  motive  in  their  heresy.  The  complete 
ascendancy  of  the  Jesuits  during  the  seventeenth 
century  ultimately  wrought  the  ruin  of  Poland,  their 
policy  having  expelled  the  Protestants,  alienated  the 
Cossacks,  who  belonged  to  the  Greek  Church,  and 
paralysed  the  intellectual  life  of  the  nation. 

In  France,  the  decay  of  Protestantism  was  effected 
substantially  by  economic  means.  When  Richelieu 
obtained  power  the  Huguenot  party  was  strong,  turbu- 
lent, intolerant,  and  aggressive.  Practising  on  the 
one  hand  a  firm  political  control,  and  on  the  other  a 
strict  tolerance,  he  began  the  policy  of  detaching  the 
ablest  nobles  from  the  Huguenot  interest  by  giving 
them  positions  of  the  highest  honour  and  trust,  the 
holding  of  which  soon  reconciled  them  to  the  court. 
Thus  deprived  of  leaders  who  were  men  of  the 
world,  the  Huguenot  party  fell  into  the  hands  of 
its  fanatical  clergy,  under  whose  guidance  it  became 
more  aggressive,  and  so  provoked  fresh  civil  war. 
The  balance  of  military  power  being  now  easily 
on  the  side  of  the  crown,  the  revolts  were  decisively 


332  THE  KEFOBMAT10N. 

put  down  ;  and  the  policy  of  anti-ecclesiasticism  and 
toleration,  persisted  in  by  Richelieu  and  carried  on 
after  him  by  Mazarin,  prevented  any  further  strife. 
Thus  French  Protestantism  was  irretrievably  on  the 
decline  when  Louis  XIV.,  reverting  to  the  politics  of 
Catholic  bigotry,  and  not  content  with  setting  on  foot 
cruel  persecutions  which  drove  many  from  the  country 
despite  the  laws  against  emigration,  committed  the 
immense  and  criminal  blunder  of  revoking  the  Edict 
of  Nantes  (1685),  and  so  expelling  from  France  the 
remnant  of  the  Huguenots.  He  had  been  advised  that 
the  refusal  of  liberty  of  worship  would  bring  them  to 
the  Church,  and  that  they  could  be  hindered  from 
emigrating.  On  the  contrary,  his  plan  lost  to  France 
fifty  thousand  families  of  industrious  inhabitants,  whose 
Protestantism  had  ceased  to  be  turbulent,  though  it 
remained  austere ;  and  by  thus  grievously  weakening 
a  kingdom  already  heavily  bled  by  his  wars,  the  French 
king  prepared  his  own  military  humiliation,  and  the 
consequent  depression  of  his  church. 

The  alarm  and  resentment  set  up  by  his  act  counted 
for  much  in  stirring  the  English  people  three  years 
later  to  resist  their  Romanising  king  James  II.,  who, 
had  he  gone  his  way  more  prudently,  might  have  done 
much  to  rehabilitate  Catholicism  in  virtue  of  the 
fanatical  devotion  to  the  throne  already  developed  by 
the  reaction  against  the  Puritan  rebellion.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  tyrannous  policy  which  had  kept 
Ireland  Catholic,  by  identifying  Protestantism  with 
oppression,  and  Catholicism  with  the  national  memories, 
was  cruelly  carried  on  by  England,  with  the  result  of 
maintaining  a  perpetual  division  between  the  two 
countries,  and  preparing  a  great  source  of  Catholic 
population  for  the  United  States  in  a  later  age.  The 


SOCIAL  AND  POLITICAL  RESULTS.  333 

profound  decivilisation  inflicted  on  Ireland  by  Pro- 
testant England  is  probably  the  greatest  of  the  social 
and  political  evils  resulting  from  the  Reformation ; 
but  the  persecution  of  dissenters  in  England,  and  the 
more  savage  dragooning  of  Presbyterians  in  Scotland 
under  Charles  II.  and  James  II.,  must  go  to  the  same 
account.  Nowhere,  not  even  in  Protestant  Switzer- 
land— save  in  the  case  of  Zurich,  well  led  by  Zwingli, 
and  in  that  of  the  Grisons,  where  Catholics  and 
Protestants  agreed  to  abolish  feudal  abuses — did  the 
Reformation  work  social  betterment  for  the  common 
people.  In  England  the  tyranny  of  the  Protestant 
nobles  under  Edward  VI.  was  both  corrupt  and  cruel ; 
and  the  Norfolk  rising  of  1549  was  as  savagely  sup- 
pressed as  that  of  Wat  Tyler  had  been  in  Catholic 
times. 

In  the  processes  by  which  Protestantism  lost  ground, 
as  in  those  by  which  Catholicism  counteracted  its  own 
successes,  there  was  a  considerable  play  of  intellectual 
forces,  which  we  shall  consider  apart.  But  though 
the  economic,  the  political,  and  the  intellectual  forces 
always  interact,  the  two  former  have  had  a  potency 
which  has  thus  far  been  little  acknowledged.  It  is 
essential  to  realise  that  they  have  affected  the  move- 
ment of  thought  more  than  they  have  been  affected  by 
it ;  and  above  all  that  they,  and  not  the  imaginary 
bias  of  race,  have  determined  the  total  fortunes  of  the 
Reformation. 

§  4.  Intellectual  Results. 

THE  intellectual  reactions  set  up  by  the  Reforma- 
tion were  complex,  and  on  some  sides  apparently 
contradictory.  Some  populations,  and  in  general  the 


334  THE  REFORMATION. 

populace  of  the  countries  which  remained  Protestant, 
were  made  collectively  more  fanatical  than  they  had 
been  under  Catholicism,  even  as  Catholicism  itself 
became  for  a  time  more  strenuous  under  the  stress  of 
the  conflict ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  there  grew  up 
on  the  intellectual  border  of  Protestantism  forms  of 
heresy  which  outraged  its  majority  ;  and  within  the 
political  sphere  of  Catholicism  there  came  a  new 
growth  of  scepticism.  All  these  varying  results  can 
be  traced  to  the  initial  shock  of  the  revolt  against 
Rome. 

Luther  and  Calvin,  it  is  clear,  were  alike  bigots,  as 
little  disposed  to  religious  toleration  as  the  papacy 
ever  was.  Of  Pope  Paul  III.  (1534-49)  it  is  recorded 
that  he  "  bore  with  contradiction  in  the  consistory, 
and  encouraged  freedom  of  discussion."  No  such 
tribute  could  be  paid  to  the  Protestant  leaders  of 
his  day.  Indeed,  it  is  noteworthy  that  while  the 
Catholic  hierarchy  of  the  period  were  not  a  little  open 
to  new  scientific  thought,  Luther  derided  the  teaching 
of  Copernicus,  and  would  have  suppressed  it  if  he 
could.  It  resulted  from  the  spirit  of  such  leaders 
that  their  polities  could  not  be  reconciled.  Luther, 
though  he  proceeded  from  a  theoretical  retention  of 
the  Mass  (set  forth  in  the  conciliatory  Augsburg 
Confession  of  1530,  drawn  up  by  Melanchthon)  to  a 
bitter  denunciation  of  it,  always  leant  towards  the 
Catholic  doctrine  of  the  eucharist  in  that  he  merely 
substituted  the  dogma  of  "  consubstantiation  "  for 
"  transubstantiation,"  and  refused  to  go  further. 
The  Swiss  Protestants  took  up  another  position. 
Their  chief  founder,  Ulrich  Zwingli,  a  more  rational 
spirit  than  Luther,  and  brave  enough  to  teach  that 
good  heathens  might  be  saved,  went  boldly  back  to 


INTELLECTUAL  EESULTS.  335 

the  position  of  John  Scotus,  and  taught  that  the 
bread  and  wine  of  the  sacrament  were  merely 
memorial  symbols.  On  this  head,  despite  the  efforts 
of  Melanchthon,  Luther  refused  all  compromise,  and 
denounced  the  Zwinglians  with  his  usual  violence. 
Calvin,  whose  power  in  Geneva  was  established  in 
1541,  tempered  their  formula  after  Luther's  death 
to  the  extent  of  affirming,  in  Lutheran  language,  that 
in  the  eucharist  a  certain  divine  influence  was  com- 
municated to  faithful  participants.  But  even  this 
could  not  secure  the  dogmatic  agreement  that  the 
theological  ideal  demanded ;  and  the  followers  of 
Luther  soon  gave  the  quarrel  a  quality  of  incurable 
bitterness.  Even  on  the  question  of  predestination 
the  sects  could  not  agree,  though  both  Luther  and 
Calvin,  in  their  different  terminologies,  affirmed  the 
foreordination  of  all  things. 

These  were   only  the  most    comprehensive   of    a 

multitude  of  Protestant  divisions.     In  the  sixteenth 

century    there     are     enumerated     by    ecclesiastical 

historians  at  least  eighty  Protestant  sects,  all  named 

for  certain  special  tenets,  or  after  leaders  who  held 

themselves  apart.     The   general  resort  to  the  Bible 

had  thus  revived  the  phenomena  of  the  early  ages  of 

the  faith  ;  and  each  leading  sect  or  church  within  its 

own  sphere  sought  in  the  papal  fashion  to  suppress 

variation.     The  result  was  a  maximum  of  dogmatism 

and  malice.     Every  sect  split  into  many.     Thus  there 

were  some  thirteen  groups  of  Anabaptists ;  over  thirty 

separate  confessions  were  drawn  up  among  the  main 

bodies ;    and    Luther    enumerated  nine  varieties  of 

doctrine    on    the    eucharist    alone.       The    doctrine 

seldomest   broached  was  that  of  mutual   toleration. 

Between  Lutherans  and  Calvinists  the  quarrel  went 


336  THE  REFORMATION. 

so  far  that  when  John  Laski,  the  learned  Polish 
Calvinist,  was  sailing  from  England  to  the  continent 
on  his  expulsion  with  his  adherents  from  England 
under  Mary,  he  was  refused  leave  to  remain  at  the 
Lutheran  ports  of  Elsinore,  Hamburg,  Lubeck,  and 
Rostock.  But  as  time  went  on  the  Lutherans  were 
divided  endlessly  and  irreconcilably  on  doctrinal  issues 
among  themselves.  Melanchthon  died  declaring  the 
gladness  with  which  he  passed  away  from  a  world 
filled  with  the  monstrous  hatreds  of  theologians ; 
and  after  his  day  matters  grew  worse  instead  of 
better. 

It  was  thus  abundantly  proved  that  the  cult  of  the 
Bible  gave  no  help  towards  peace  and  goodwill ;  and 
Catholicism  naturally  profited  by  the  demonstration, 
many  Protestants  returning  to  its  fold.  In  Germany 
such  reversions  were  set  up  alike  by  the  attitude  of 
Luther  towards  the  revolting  peasants,  many  of 
whom  in  turn  rejected  his  doctrine,  and  by  the 
wild  licence  of  the  Anabaptists,  whose  madness  could 
be  traced  to  his  impetus.  Equally  did  Romanism 
gain  from  the  admission  that  freedom  of  profession 
was  found  to  give  outlets  for  atheism ;  and  from  the 
open  growth  of  Unitarianism  which,  taking  rise  in 
Italy  in  the  Lutheran  period,  was  thence  carried  to 
Switzerland  and  elsewhere,  and  made  considerable 
headway  in  Poland.  The  younger  Socinus  (Sozzini), 
who  joined  and  developed  the  movement,  was  not  its 
founder  even  in  Poland ;  but  when  modified  and 
organised  by  him  there  it  received  his  name.  The 
Socinian  cult  terrified  many  Protestants,  driving  them 
back  to  the  old  ways  ;  and  it  may  have  been  partly 
the  resentful  fear  of  such  effects  that  led  Calvin  to 
commit  his  historic  crime  of  causing  the  Spaniard 


INTELLECTUAL  RESULTS.  337 

Servetus  to  be  burned  at  the  stake  (1553)  for  uttering 
Unitarian  doctrine.  But  Calvin's  language  at  every 
stage  of  the  episode,  his  heartless  account  of  the 
victim's  sufferings,  and  his  gross  abuse  of  him  after- 
wards, tell  of  the  ordinary  spirit  of  the  bigot — 
incensed  at  opposition  and  exulting  in  vengeance. 

Where  a  scholar  could  so  sink,  the  bulk  of  the 
Protestant  communities  inevitably  became  fanatical 
and  hard.  In  Holland,  where  Calvin's  church  became 
that  of  the  republic,  it  treated  Arminianism  in  the 
seventeenth  century  as  itself  had  been  treated  by 
Lutheranism  in  the  sixteenth.  Arminius  (Jacobus 
Harmensen)  had  sought  in  a  halting  fashion  to  modify 
the  dogma  of  predestination,  and  to  prove  that  all 
men  might  repent  and  be  saved.  Dying  after  much 
controversy  (1609),  he  left  a  sect  who  went  further  than 
he ;  and  the  strife  came  to  the  verge  of  civil  war,  the 
Arminian  Barneveldt  being  beheaded  as  a  traitor 
(1619),  and  the  illustrious  Grotius  sentenced  to 
perpetual  imprisonment,  from  which  however  he  con- 
trived to  escape.  In  England  in  the  next  generation 
the  Presbyterians,  whose  doctrine  was  Calvinistic, 
showed  the  same  tyrannous  temper ;  the  Arminian 
archbishop  Laud  was  no  better ;  and  in  Calvinist 
Scotland  and  Lutheran  Germany  alike  the  common 
people  were  similarly  intolerant.  Standing  with  their 
leaders  on  the  Bible  as  the  beginning  and  end  of 
truth,  the  Protestants  everywhere  assumed  infallibility, 
and  proceeded  to  decree  pains  and  penalties  with  a 
quite  papal  inhumanity.  Had  Luther  been  able  to 
give  effect  to  his  hatred  of  the  Jews,  they  would  have 
been  persecuted  as  they  never  had  been — apart  from 
the  chronic  massacres — in  the  Catholic  period.  He 
would  have  left  them  neither  synagogues  nor  homes, 


338  THE  REFORMATION. 

neither  books  nor  property.     Thus  taught,  Protestants 
became  persecutors  in  mass. 

In  particular,  they  everywhere  turned  with  a  new 
zest  to  the  burning  of  witches,  the  old  superstitions 
being  frightfully  reinforced  by  the  newly  current 
doctrine  of  the  Pentateuch.  No  argument — though  it 
was  tried  by  some — could  countervail  the  testimony 
of  the  Sacred  Book  against  witchcraft,  and  its  decree 
of  the  death  penalty.  As  the  frenzy  of  witch-burning 
was  equally  intense  in  the  Catholic  countries  in  the 
Lutheran  period,  the  mania  may  be  traced  in  the  first 
instance  to  the  Inquisition,  which  made  a  specialty  of 
such  action.  But  it  is  clear  that  the  new  study  of  the 
Bible  in  Protestant  countries  gave  it  as  strong  a 
stimulus.  In  England  and  Scotland,  for  instance, 
there  had  been  very  little  witch-burning  in  the 
Catholic  period ;  and  the  first  English  law  for  the 
purpose  was  passed  under  Henry  VIII.,  in  1541 ;  but 
in  both  countries  the  madness  thenceforth  went  step 
for  step  with  the  growth  of  Puritanism ;  and  the 
amount  of  insane  cruelty  caused  by  it  is  past  human 
power  to  realise.  * 

If  the  merits  of  Christianity  as  a  civilising  force 
are  to  be  in  any  way  determined  by  its  influence  in 
working  bloodshed,  its  record  in  the  matter  of  witch- 
slaying  alone  would  serve  to  place  it,  in  that  regard, 
lower  than  any  other  creed.  Classic  paganism  knew 
no  such  infamy.  All  the  horrors  which  Christians 
are  wont  to  cite  as  typically  heathen,  the  legends  of 
Juggernaut  and  the  pictures  of  Dahomey,  dwindle 
beside  the  dreadful  sum  of  evil  set  forth  in  the  past 
of  their  own  faith.  For  the  Protestant  lands  burned 
at  least  as  many  hapless  women  for  the  imaginary 
crime  of  witchcraft  as  the  Inquisition  burned  men  for 


INTELLECTUAL  KESULTS.  339 

heresy.  Most  of  the  victims  were  women  whose  sole 
offence  had  been  to  have  few  friends.  To  be  left  a 
childless  widow  or  an  old  maid  was  to  run  the  risk  of 
impeachment  as  a  witch  by  any  superstitious  or 
malevolent  neighbour ;  and  the  danger  seems  to  have 
been  actually  doubled  when  such  a  woman  gave 
herself  to  the  work  of  rustic  medicine-making  in  a 
spirit  of  goodwill  to  her  kind.  Lonely  women  who 
suffered  in  their  minds  from  their  very  loneliness  were 
almost  sure  to  be  condemned ;  and  in  cases  where 
partial  insanity  did  not  lead  them  to  admit  the  insane 
charges  against  them,  torture  easily  attained  the  same 
end.  But  the  mere  repute  for  scientific  studies  could 
bring  a  man  to  his  .death  ;  and  in  Scotland  a  physician 
was  horribly  tortured  and  at  last  burned  on  the  charge 
of  having  raised  the  storm  which  endangered  the  life 
of  King  James  on  his  return  voyage  from  Denmark 
with  his  bride.  The  crowning  touch  of  horror  is  the 
fact  that  in  Protestant  history  for  generations  there  is 
hardly  a  trace  of  popular  compassion  for  the  victims. 
In  the  north  of  Catholic  Italy  there  was  rebellion 
against  witch-burning,  perhaps  because  it  was  a  part 
of  the  machinery  of  the  Inquisition ;  in  the  Pro- 
testant countries  there  was  nothing  of  the  kind. 
Luther,  a  man  normally  fond  of  children,  was  capable 
of  advising  that  a  "  possessed  "  child  should  be  thrown 
into  the  river  to  drown  or  be  cured.  In  Italy  and  France 
there  had  always  been  scepticism  on  the  matter 
among  educated  men  ;  in  the  Protestant  world  the  new 
Bibliolatry  made  such  scepticism  go  in  fear  of  its  life. 
Wherever  t  arose,  piety  met  it  with  the  consciousness 
of  perfect  wisdom,  derived  from  revelation.  Calvin 
was  as  confident  on  the  subject  as  Luther  ;  and  when 
Doctor  John  Wier  of  Cleves,  apparently  a  believer  in 


340  THE  KEFOBMATION. 

demons,  whose  numbers  he  afterwards  statistically 
estimated  at  over  seven  thousand  millions,  ventured 
to  argue  in  1563  that  many  of  the  so-called  witches 
were  simply  lunatics,  he  met  as  little  favour  in  the 
Protestant  as  in  the  Catholic  sphere.  It  is  to  be 
remembered,  as  a  landmark  in  intellectual  history, 
that  the  great  French  publicist  Jean  Bodin,  the  most 
original  political  thinker  of  his  age,  and  far  from 
orthodox  on  the  Christian  creed,  was  the  foremost 
champion  of  the  reigning  superstition,  which  had 
become  one  of  his  rooted  prejudices. 

In  England,  in  1584,  a  notable  book  was  written 
against  it,  the  Discoverie  of  Witchcraft,  by  Keginald 
Scot ;  but  still  the  mania  deepened.  King  Jam'es  I. 
caused  Scot's  book  to  be  burned  by  the  hangman  in 
the  next  generation  ;  and  the  superstition,  thus 
accredited,  reached  its  height  in  the  period  of  the 
Commonwealth,  whereafter  it  declined  in  the  sceptical 
era  of  the  Restoration.  Nowhere  did  effective  resistance 
arise  on  the  religious  plane.  The  reaction  was  con- 
spicuously the  work  of  the  sceptics,  noted  as  such. 
Montaigne  began  it  in  France,  by  the  sheer  force  of 
his  hardy  and  luminous  common  sense,  which  made 
no  account  of  either  the  theology  or  the  learning 
arrayed  against  it ;  and  inasmuch  as  the  most  brutal 
fanaticism  was  in  this  matter  everywhere  bound  up 
with  the  popular  creed,  the  new  enlightenment  became 
in  England  anti-democratic  because  democracy  there 
was  the  power  of  persecution,  as  in  France  it  became 
anti-clerical.  The  Protestant  movement  had  in  its 
own  despite  set  up  a  measure  of  mental  freedom,  by 
breaking  up  the  ecclesiastical  unity  of  Europe  ;  but 
its  spirit  soon  revealed  to  clear  eyes  that  freedom  of 
thought  was  not  to  be  reached  by  mere  reform  of 


INTELLECTUAL  RESULTS.  341 

the  Church  as  such.  It  thus  evolved  a  scepticism 
which  struck  at  the  roots  of  all  Christian  beliefs. 

The  intellectual  fatality  of  the  Reformation  was  that 
it  set  up  against  the  principle  of  papal  authority  not 
that  of  private  judgment  but  that  of  revelation,  and  thus 
still  made  ancient  ignorance  the  arbiter  in  the  deepest 
problems.  It  is  indeed  vain  to  say,  with  Erasmus 
and  with  Goethe,  that  Luther  did  ill  to  force  a  crisis, 
and  that  the  reform  of  the  Church  should  have  been 
left  to  time  and  the  process  of  culture.  No  culture 
could  have  reformed  the  papacy  as  an  economic 
system :  the  struggle  there  was  finally  not  between 
knowledge  and  ignorance  but  between  vested  interests 
and  outsiders'  rights.  In  the  Rome  of  Leo  X.,  as 
Ranke  has  calculated,  there  were  twenty-five  hundred 
venal  offices,  half  of  them  created  by  Leo  to  raise 
funds  for  the  building  of  St.  Peter's  ;  and  probably 
most  were  held  by  cultured  men.  What  they  fought 
for  was  not  dogma  but  revenue  :  Luther  when  among 
them  had  been  scandalised  by  their  irreligion,  not  by 
their  superstition.  Looking  back,  we  may  still  say 
that  a  violent  rupture  was  inevitable.  Two  genera- 
tions later,  we  find  Pope  Sixtus  V.  (1585-90)  raising 
money  as  did  Leo  X.  by  the  sale  of  places,  and  putting 
the  prices  so  high  as  to  promote  official  corruption  in 
an  extreme  degree. 

Rome,  as  a  city,  lived  on  its  ecclesiastical  revenue, 
and  the  total  vested  interest  was  irreversible.  During 
the  long  papal  schism  in  which  the  main  wealth  of 
the  Church  went  to  the  Popes  of  Avignon,  Rome  sank 
visibly  to  the  level  of  "  a  town  of  cowherds,"  and  the 
old  church  of  St.  Peter's  was  in  danger  of  falling  to 
pieces.  From  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  to  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth,  the  Popes  laboured  successively 


342  THE  KEFOEMATION. 

to  make  their  city  the  most  splendid  in  Europe ; 
and  only  a  great  revenue,  extorted  by  corrupt  or 
corrupting  methods,  could  maintain  it.  The  great 
Council  of  Trent,  begun  in  1545  to  reform  and  reor- 
ganise the  Church,  had  accomplished  at  its  close  in 
1563  only  a  few  doctrinal,  disciplinary,  and  hier- 
archical modifications ;  and  its  own  history  proved  the 
impossibility  of  a  vital  reform  from  within.  Twice 
suspended  for  long  periods,  on  pretexts  of  the  dis- 
turbed state  of  Europe,  it  revealed  in  its  closing 
session  the  inability  of  the  nations  as  such  to  agree 
on  any  curative  policy.  The  emperor,  Ferdinand  L, 
called  for  many  reforms  in  a  Protestant  direction, 
such  as  marriage  of  priests,  schools  for  the  poor,  "'the 
cup  for  the  laity,"  and  the  reform  of  convents  ;  and 
the  French  prelates  supported  him ;  but  those  of  Spain 
violently  resisted,  though  they  agreed  in  wishing  to 
restrict  the  Pope's  power;  while  the  Italians,  the 
most  numerous  party,  stood  by  the  Pope  in  all  things, 
denouncing  all  gainsayers.  In  the  end,  the  diplo- 
matic cardinal  Morone  arranged  matters  with  the 
different  courts  ;  the  bishops  had  for  the  most  part  to 
give  way  ;  and  the  powers  of  the  Pope,  which  in  1545 
the  movers  of  the  Council  had  been  bent  on  curtail- 
ing, were  established  in  nearly  every  particular, 
without  any  important  change  being  made  in  the 
administrative  system.  The  Council  had  indeed 
repudiated  the  Lutheran  and  Calvinist  doctrines  of 
predestination  to  sin  and  salvation  ;  and  on  this  head 
the  Lutherans  gradually  came  round  to  the  Catholic 
view ;  but  on  the  side  of  Church  government  the  Refor- 
mation remained  practically  justified.  Still,  it  is  the 
historic  fact  that  its  first  general  result  was  intellectual 
retrogression.  Save  in  England,  where  Elizabeth's 


INTELLECTUAL  EESULTS.  343 

irreligious  regimen  gave  scope  for  a  literary  and 
scientific  renaissance  while  it  humiliated  religion  and 
the  Church,  leaving  the  fanatical  growth  of  Pro- 
testantism to  come  later,  the  Protestant  atmosphere 
was  everywhere  one  of  theological  passion  and  super- 
stition, in  which  art  and  science  and  fine  letters  were 
blighted. 

By  reaction,  some  similar  results  accrued  within  the 
scope  of  Catholicism  in  France  and  Italy.  It  is 
significant  that  "  the  importance  of  the  anatomical 
description  of  the  heart  by  Vesalius  was  not  thoroughly 
comprehended  by  investigators  for  seventy-three  years 
(1543  to  1616) ;  and  the  uses  of  the  valves  of  the 
veins  remained  unknown  for  more  than  half  a  cen- 
tury." This  was  the  period  of  the  wars  of  religion  in 
France,  and  of  the  theologians  in  Germany.  Servetus 
had  gone  far  on  the  way  to  the  theory  of  the  circula- 
tion of  the  blood  in  his  Christianismi  Restitutio  (not 
in  his  work  on  the  Trinity,  as  is  often  asserted),  but 
the  fact  remained  absolutely  unknown  in  Switzerland 
and  Germany.  Scotland,  which  just  before  the  Refor- 
mation had  in  the  works  of  Dunbar  and  Lyndsay  what 
might  have  been  the  beginning  of  a  great  literature, 
fell  into  a  theological  delirium  which  lasted  two 
hundred  years,  and  from  which  the  nation  emerged 
with  its  literary  and  intellectual  continuity  destroyed, 
and  needing  new  tillage  from  foreign  thought  to  yield 
any  new  life.  It  was  only  after  the  period  of  devout 
Protestantism  had  been  succeeded  by  strife-weariness, 
toleration,  and  doubt,  that  Protestant  Holland  and 
Switzerland  began  to  count  for  anything  in  science 
and  scholarship ;  and  Germany  and  Scandinavia  had 
to  wait  still  longer  for  a  new  birth. 

Catholic  France,  with  all  her  troubles,  fared  on  the 


344  THE  REFORMATION. 

whole  better  in  the  mental  life.  Rabelais  was  for  his 
country  a  fountain  of  riotous  wisdom  all  through  the 
worst  time  of  the  civil  wars ;  and  before  they  had 
ended  Montaigne  began  effectually  the  new  enlighten- 
ment. Only  in  England,  where  Shakespeare  and 
Bacon  signalised  Protestant  rule,  was  there  any  similar 
good  fortune  ;  and  both  in  England  and  France  the 
period  was  one  of  extensive  though  necessarily  cautious 
scepticism.  Alongside  of  the  first  stirrings  of  Pro- 
testantism there  had  arisen  in  France  a  spirit  of  critical 
unbelief,  represented  by  the  Cymbalum  Mundi  of 
Bonaventure  des  Periers  (1537),  who  had  set  out  as  a 
Protestant ;  and  the  ferocities  of  the  war  engendered 
in  many  a  temper  like  his.  What  Montaigne  did  was 
to  give  to  practical  scepticism  the  warrant  of  literary 
genius,  and  to  win  for  it  free  currency  by  the  skill  of 
his  insinuation.  Without  such  fortunate  fathering, 
rationalism  in  England  made  much  headway  in  the 
Elizabethan  age.  Shakespeare  is  subtly  impregnated 
with  its  spirit;  Bacon  gave  it  a  broad  basis  under 
cover  of  orthodoxy  ;  and  there  were  loud  contemporary 
protests  that  atheism  was  on  foot  wherever  continental 
culture  came. 

By  such  complainants  the  evil  was  early  traced  to 
Italy  ;  and  it  is  clear  that  there,  after  the  Spanish  con- 
quest, men's  energies  turned  from  the  closed  field  of 
politics  to  that  of  religion  and  philosophy,  despite  the 
Inquisition,  very  much  as  men  in  ancient  Greece  had 
turned  to  philosophy  after  the  rise  of  the  Macedonian 
tyranny.  From  Italy  came  alike  Deism  and  Uni- 
tarianism,  and  such  atheism  as  there  was.  The 
Inquisition  still  burned  all  heretics  alike  when  it 
could  catch  them ;  but  even  among  the  clergy,  nay, 
among  the  very  inquisitors  themselves,  there  were 


INTELLECTUAL  RESULTS.  345 

many  heretics ;  and  the  zealots  had  to  call  in  lay 
bigots  to  help  them.  Heretical  books  were  burned  by 
the  thousand,  most  being  absolutely  suppressed  ;  and 
when  there  was  established  (about  1550)  the  famous 
Index  Expurgatoritu,  in  imitation  of  the  example 
already  set  at  Louvain  and  Paris,  it  was  soon  found  that 
some  works  by  cardinals,  and  by  the  framer  of  the  first 
Italian  list,  had  to  be  included.  Protestantism  was 
thus  crushed  out  in  Italy,  with  due  bloodshed  to  boot ; 
and  the  heretical  Franciscans  were  forced  in  mass  to 
recant ;  but  in  the  end  there  was  no  gain  to  faith. 
Heresy  became  more  elusive  and  more  pervasive  ; 
and  when  in  the  year  1600  the  Papacy  put  to  death 
Giordano  Bruno,  his  work  as  the  herald  of  a  new 
philosophy  was  already  done.  In  the  next  generation 
appeared  Galileo,  the  pioneer  of  a  new  era  of  practical 
science.  Thus  even  in  her  time  of  downfall  did  Italy 
begin  for  Europe  a  second  renascence. 

Thenceforth,  in  the  sphere  of  the  Church  of  Rome, 
unbelief  persisted  either  audaciously  or  secretly  along- 
side of  the  faith.  Within  the  Church,  the  long  battle 
with  Protestantism  had  evolved  fresh  energies  of 
propaganda,  and  even  a  measure  of  ascetic  reforma- 
tion. In  particular,  the  new  Order  of  Jesuits  (founded 
in  1534),  which  we  have  seen  completing  the  recapture 
of  Poland,  strove  everywhere  by  every  available  means, 
fair  and  foul,  for  the  Church's  supremacy.  Where 
treachery  and  cruelty  could  not  be  used,  as  they  were 
in  Poland,  the  Jesuits  made  play  with  a  system  of 
education  which  realised  the  ideals  of  the  time ;  and 
besides  thus  training  the  young  as  adherents,  the 
Church  developed  within  itself  a  revival  of  ecclesi- 
astical learning  that  made  a  formidable  resistance  to 
the  learning  of  French  and  English  Protestantism. 


346  THE  REFOKMATION. 

In  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century  the 
combatants  thus  wrought  by  their  literary  warfare 
what  they  had  previously  done  by  their  physical 
strife — a  gain  to  the  spirit  of  unbelief.  Neither  side 
convinced  the  other ;  and  while  the  Protestants 
discredited  many  of  the  old  Catholic  beliefs,  their 
opponents  more  subtly  discredited  the  faculty  of 
theological  reason,  putting  all  human  judgments  in 
doubt  as  such.  The  outcome  was  a  strengthening 
of  the  anti-theological  bias.  Jesuit  education,  where 
it  became  at  all  scientific,  armed  the  born  sceptics ; 
and  where  it  was  limited  to  belles  lettres  it  failed 
in  the  long  run  to  make  either  earnest  believers  or 
able  disputants. 

Thus  the  Reformation,  in  the  act  of  giving  Chris- 
tianity a  new  intensity  of  life  among  certain  popula- 
tions, where  it  fostered  and  was  fostered  by  a  growth 
of  intolerant  democracy,  unwittingly  promoted  at 
once  fanaticism  and  freethinking  both  in  its  own  and 
in  its  enemy's  sphere.  Deepened  superstition  forced 
a  deepening  of  scepticism  ;  fanaticism  drove  moderate 
men  to  science;  and  theological  learning  discredited 
theology.  In  papal  and  downtrodden  Italy,  in 
monarchic  and  military  France,  in  the  England 
of  the  Restoration,  and  in  semi-democratic  Holland, 
there  worked  in  the  seventeenth  century  the  same 
divergent  forces. 

In  both  Holland  and  England,  by  help  of  the  spirit 
of  fanatical  democracy,  the  multiplication  of  sects  and 
heresies  in  the  second  generation  of  the  seventeenth 
century  was  so  great — 180  being  specified  in  England 
alone — that  no  repressive  policy  could  deal  with  them ; 
and  under  cover  of  their  political  freedom  there  arose 
Unitarian  doctrine  among  the  common  people,  even 


INTELLECTUAL  RESULTS.  347 

as  anti- Scriptural  Deism  spread  among  the  educated. 
Devoutly  religious  men,  such  as  George  Fox,  the 
founder  of  Quakerism,  by  the  very  thoroughness  of 
their  loyalty  to  the  doctrine  of  the  inward  light,  helped 
to  shake  among  sincere  people  the  old  docility  of  belief 
in  revelation,  though  in  some  cases  they  reinforced 
it,  and  in  many  more  evoked,  by  reaction,  the  spirit  of 
persecution. 

The  net  gain  from  Protestantism  thus  lay  in  the 
disruption  of  centralised  spiritual  tyranny.  The 
rents  in  the  structure  made  openings  for  air  and 
light  at  a  time  when  new  currents  were  beginning 
to  blow  and  new  light  to  shine.  Twenty  years  before 
Luther's  schism,  Columbus  had  found  the  New  World. 
Copernicus,  dying  in  1543,  left  his  teaching  to  the 
world  in  which  Protestantism  had  just  established 
itself.  Early  in  the  next  century  Kepler  and  Galileo 
began  to  roll  back  for  men  the  old  dream-boundaries 
of  the  universe.  The  modern  era  was  in  full  progres- 
sion ;  and  with  it  Christianity  had  begun  its  era 
of  slow  decline. 


CHAPTER  II. 

PROGRESS   OF   ANTI-CHRISTIAN   THOUGHT. 

§  1.  The  Physical  Sciences. 

IT  was  primarily  the  growth  of  physical  science,  from 
the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  that  gave 
solidity  and  permanence  to  the  new  movements  of 
rationalistic  revolt  aroused  by  the  spectacle  of  'the 
Reformation  and  the  strifes  it  engendered.  That 
spectacle,  and  in  general  the  wars  of  religion  which 
followed,  tended  more  to  make  scoffers  or  sceptics 
than  to  develop  constructive  rationalism.  One  of  the 
conclusions  forced  on  statesmanlike  minds  by  the 
religious  wars  in  France  was  that  "  a  peace  with  two 
religions  was  better  than  a  war  with  none  ";  and  the 
seventeenth  century  there  began  with  a  strong  though 
secretive  tendency  among  the  idle  classes  to  what  in 
the  next  century  became  universally  known  as  the 
Voltairean  temper.  In  the  seventeenth,  however,  it 
was  denied  the  use  of  printing ;  and  under  this  dis- 
advantage it  must  have  fared  ill  were  it  not  for  the 
new  studies  which  at  once  developed  and  buttressed 
the  spirit  of  inquiry.  They  built  up  a  new  habit  of 
mind,  the  surest  obstacle  to  dogma. 

Were  men  wont  to  develop  their  beliefs  logically, 
the  teaching  of  Copernicus  alone,  when  once  accepted, 
would  have  broken  up  the  orthodox  faith,  which  at 
nearly  every  point  implied  the  geocentric  theory. 

348 


THE  PHYSICAL  SCIENCES.  349 

Giordano  Bruno,  recognising  this,  wove  on  the  one 
hand  the  Copernican  principle  into  his  restatement  of 
the  ancient  doctrine  of  the  infinity  of  the  universe, 
and  on  the  other  hand  derided  alike  Catholicism  and 
Protestantism.  But  a  comprehensive  philosophy  is 
not  the  kind  of  propaganda  that  first  "  comes  home 
to  men's  business  and  bosoms  ":  the  line  of  practical 
disturbance  lay  through  exact  science;  and  it  is  in 
the  practical  and  experimental  work  of  Galileo  that 
Copernicanism  begins  (1616-1638)  to  stir  the  educated 
intelligence  of  Europe.  Bacon  and  Bodin,  like  Luther, 
had  rejected  it  as  theoretically  propounded.  It  was 
the  telescopic  discoveries  of  Galileo  that  staggered 
the  sceptics  and  alarmed  the  church. 

The  need  for  a  solid  discipline  as  a  grounding  for 
rationalism  is  made  clear  by  the  aberrations  of  many 
of  the  earlier  religious  doubters.  Bodin,  as  we  have 
seen,  held  fanatically  by  witchcraft ;  and  he  likewise 
accepted  astrology,  as  did  many  half-developed  Italian 
freethinkers  who  rejected  the  ideas  of  demons  and 
sorcery,  and  doubted  much  concerning  the  Bible. 
Men  reasoned  on  such  matters  by  the  light  of  their 
training,  of  what  seemed  to  be  probability,  and  of 
scanty  evidence,  in  matters  where,  as  in  astrology, 
hypotheses  could  be  properly  checked  only  by  minute 
and  patient  scrutiny.  Thus  the  disbelievers  in  astro- 
logy were  as  a  rule  bigoted  Christians  who,  like  Luther, 
merely  rejected  it  as  unscriptural,  while  Melanchthon 
leant  to  the  belief.  It  has  been  said  with  broad  truth 
that  whereas  Greece,  with  her  dialectic  discipline, 
exhorted  men  to  make  their  beliefs  agree  with  one 
another,  and  the  Christian  Church  ordered  them  to 
make  their  beliefs  agree  with  her  dogma,  the  modern 
spirit  demands  that  beliefs  should  agree  with  facts. 


350  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

Such  a  spirit  first  promoted  and  then  was  immensely 
promoted  by  the  study  of  natural  science.  Even  in 
the  Middle  Ages,  as  in  antiquity,  physicians  were  pro- 
verbially given  to  irreligion  ;  and  the  study  of  physics 
was  still  more  conducive  to  religious  doubt  than  that 
of  physic. 

In  England  the  naturalistic  spirit,  as  we  may  term 
it,  was  notably  popularised  by  Bacon,  but  the  effectual 
growth  of  Protestant  fanaticism  began  in  his  day,  and 
had  to  run  its  course  before  much  energy  was  available 
for  scientific  research;  though  both  Gilbert  the  elec- 
trician and  Harvey  the  discoverer  of  the  circulation  of 
the  blood  belonged  to  Bacon's  generation.  But  even 
before  the  Restoration,  educated  Englishmen  were 
weary  enough  of  strife  to  begin  the  gatherings  which 
afterwards  became  the  Royal  Society,  devoted  strictly 
to  scientific  enquiry,  with  a  positive  veto  on  all  theo- 
logical discussion. 

To  their  scientific  studies  they  had  a  powerful  lead 
from  France,  where  Descartes  had  virtually  begun  a 
new  era  in  philosophy  by  his  Discourse  on  Method 
(1637),  a  work  which  professed  allegiance  to  the 
Church  but  reversed  all  the  Church's  methods ;  and 
where  Gassendi,  a  truer  physicist  than  Descartes, 
controverted  the  spiritualistic  positions  of  the  latter  in 
a  singularly  modern  spirit  of  rationalism.  By  this 
time,  too,  had  begun  to  appear  the  impotence  of  the 
Church  against  the  ubiquitousness  of  modern  heresy. 
She  contrived  to  strike  where  she  should  have 
spared,  and  to  spare  where  she  ought  in  consis- 
tency to  have  struck.  Galileo  was  probably,  as  he 
professed  to  be,  an  orthodox  Catholic  in  his  main 
theological  beliefs,  yet  he  was  persecuted  by  the 
Inquisition ;  and  though  the  story  of  his  "  still  it 


THE  PHYSICAL  SCIENCES.  351 

moves "  is  a  fable,  he  was  forced  to  recant  under 
threat  of  torture.  Descartes,  who  protested  his 
loyalty  to  the  Church,  was  at  least  a  new  support 
to  theism;  but  because  his  teachings  were  adopted 
in  France  by  the  Jansenists,  the  quasi-Protestant 
enemies  of  the  Jesuits,  they  were  ecclesiastically 
prohibited,  and  his  supporters  in  the  church  and 
the  university  were  persecuted ;  while  the  prudent 
Gassendi,  who  at  times  reasons  like  an  atheist,  con- 
trived without  protestation  to  keep  on  good  terms 
with  the  Church,  of  which  he  was  actually  a  Canon. 
He  had  taken  orders  solely  for  the  sake  of  an  income ; 
and  he  was  never  disturbed,  though  he  wrote  a  vindi- 
cation of  Epicurus,  one  of  the  most  nearly  atheistical 
of  the  Greek  philosophers. 

Nowhere  is  the  new  impulse  to  science  more  clearly 
seen  than  in  papal  and  Spanish-ruled  Italy.  There, 
as  Bacon  complained  was  the  case  nearly  everywhere 
throughout  Europe,  most  scientific  professors  were 
poorly  paid,  while  the  learned  professions  were  well 
endowed ;  yet  at  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century 
there  did  not  exist  a  single  distinguished  Greek  scholar 
in  the  peninsula ;  and  while  this  may  have  been  due 
to  papal  policy,  the  unfostered  study  of  the  natural 
sciences  went  forward  on  all  hands.  Narrowly  watched 
by  the  Church,  the  students  nevertheless  propagated 
new  science  throughout  north-western  Europe.  Un- 
happily, as  we  have  seen,  the  theological  spirit  still 
hampered  its  evolution,  but  the  study  persisted. 

From  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  onwards 
it  is  clear  that  physical  science  by  its  very  method 
and  character  undermined  theology.  Here  there  were 
possible  rational  proof  and  intelligent  agreement, 
instead  of  the  eternal  sterility  of  theological  debate  on 


352  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

irrational  propositions.  In  France,  Holland,  and 
England,  the  followers  of  Descartes,  even  when 
agreeing  on  a  fundamentally  wrong  theory  of  cosmic 
physics,  made  for  rationalism  by  their  discipline  as 
well  as  by  what  was  accurate  in  their  detailed  science ; 
the  influence  of  the  English  Eoyal  Society  was 
recognisably  anti-clerical ;  and  from  Gassendi  onwards 
the  whole  scientific  movement  told  decisively  against 
superstition,  so  that  the  belief  in  witchcraft  was 
discredited  within  a  generation  from  the  time  of  its 
worst  intensity.  Glanvil,  who  professed  a  scientific 
scepticism,  on  Cartesian  lines,  defended  the  super- 
stition as  Bodin  had  done,  and  was  supported  not  only 
by  the  theologians  but  by  such  a  pious  man  of  science 
as  the  chemist  Boyle,  who  was  equally  sceptical  in  his 
own  proper  sphere ;  yet  they  could  not  restore 
credulity .  More  august  beliefs  were  shaken  in  turn. 
Boyle  in  his  latter  years  set  himself  anxiously  to 
defend  Christianity ;  and  Newton  was  moved  to  exert 
himself  even  in  the  cause  of  theism,  which  was  newly 
challenged.  But  Newton  himself  was  a  Unitarian  ; 
his  distinguished  contemporary  the  astronomer  Halley 
was  reputed  a  thorough  unbeliever ;  and  Newton's 
own  philosophy,  which  proceeded  on  Gassendi  as  well 
as  on  the  devout  Kepler,  was  denounced  by  some,  in- 
cluding the  German  Leibnitz,  as  tending  to  atheism. 
Leibnitz  in  turn  stood  wearily  aloof  from  the  church 
in  his  own  country.  No  personal  bias  or  prejudice 
could  cancel  the  fundamental  dissidence  between 
exact  science  and  "  revealed  "  dogma. 

While  the  literary  movement  of  English  Deism  in 
the  eighteenth  century  was  not  ostensibly  grounded 
on  physical  philosophy,  being  rather  critical  and 
logical,  it  always  kept  the  new  science  in  view ;  and 


THE  PHYSICAL  SCIENCES.  353 

the  movement  in  France,  as  set  up  by  the  young 
Voltaire,  connected  itself  from  the  first  with  the  New- 
tonian philosophy,  which  there  had  to  drive  out  the 
Cartesian,  now  become  orthodox.  In  the  hands  of 
La  Mettrie,  biological  science  pointed  to  even  deeper 
heresy  ;  and,  for  such  propagandists  as  Diderot  and 
D'Holbach,  all  science  was  an  inspiration  to  a  general 
rejection  of  religion.  Even  the  pursuit  of  mathe- 
matics developed  pronounced  unbelievers,  such  as 
D'Alembert  and  Condorcet.  When,  finally,  in  the 
closing  years  of  the  century  the  scientific  spirit  flagged 
or  stagnated  in  England,  first  by  reason  of  the  new 
growths  of  industry  and  the  new  imperial  expansion, 
later  by  reason  of  reaction  against  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, it  was  the  French  men  of  science,  in  particular 
the  astronomers  and  mathematicians,  as  Laplace, 
Lagrange,  Lalande,  and  Delambre,  who  carried  on  the 
profession  of  rationalism.  In  particular,  Laplace's 
great  contribution,  the  nebular  hypothesis,  clinched 
on  non-theistic  grounds  the  whole  development  of 
modern  astronomy  ;  and  the  philosopher  Kant,  who 
on  that  point  had  in  a  measure  anticipated  him,  never 
adopted  the  semblance  of  Christian  orthodoxy  even 
while  seeking  to  conserve  theism. 

All  the  later  generalisations  of  science  have  told  in 
the  same  way ;  and  all  have  had  to  struggle  for  life 
against  the  instinctive  hostility  of  the  Christian 
Churches,  Protestant  and  Catholic  alike.  Geology, 
after  a  generation  of  outcry,  made  an  end  of  the 
orthodox  theory  of  cosmic  creation ;  the  evolution 
theory  drove  home  the  negation  with  a  new  construc- 
tive doctrine;  and  Darwinism,  after  a  no  less  desperate 
contest,  has  upturned  the  very  foundations  of  Christian 
ethics  as  well  as  dogma.  It  does  not  countervail  this 

AA 


354  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

essential  tendency  that  a  number  of  men  of  science 
in  each  generation  profess  to  adhere  to  Christianity. 
The  adherence  is  seldom  thorough,  and  when  it  is,  it 
is  commonly  recognised  to  stand  for  lack  of  culture  on 
the  historical  and  ethical  sides  of  the  issue.  The 
result  is  that  Protestant  Christianity  nearly  everywhere 
capitulates  outwardly  to  natural  science,  professing 
still  to  save  its  own  more  essential  dogmas;  while 
Catholicism  forces  upon  its  adherents  either  "  scien- 
tific nescience"  or  a  dissimulation  fatal  to  zeal. 


§  2.  Philosophy,  Cosmic  and  Moral. 

It  lies  on  the  face  of  our  sketch  of  the  movement  of 
physical  science  that  it  is  subversive  of  Christian 
orthodoxy,  though  not  of  extra-Christian  theism.  But 
since  Giordano  Bruno  all  cosmic  philosophy  has 
pointed  to  pantheism;  and  all  moral  philosophy  since 
Descartes  has  been  more  or  less  fatally  subversive  of 
Christian  dogma.  In  the  great  work  of  Spinoza 
(1671),  who  partly  proceeded  on  Descartes  and  partly 
transcended  him,  we  have  a  philosophy  and  an  ethic 
that  are  reluctantly  pronounced  by  respectful  theists 
to  be  virtually  atheistic ;  and  no  great  philosophy 
since  has  reversed  that  impetus. 

Moral  philosophy  had  begun  to  be  non-theological 
in  Montaigne's  day  ;  and  his  disciple,  Charron,  con- 
structed in  his  Wisdom  what  is  pronounced  to  be  the 
first  modern  treatise  on  that  footing.  Less  than  a 
century  later  the  English  Cumberland,  although  a 
bishop  of  the  Church,  took  a  similarly  rationalistic 
course  in  morals  in  his  reply  to  Hobbes  (1672), 
making  no  appeal  to  revelation,  though  of  course 


PHILOSOPHY,  COSMIC  AND  MORAL.       355 

making  no  attack  on  it;  and  the  undisguised 
naturalism  of  Hobbes  was  thus  tacitly  countenanced 
in  fundamentals  from  the  clerical  side,  in  the  very  act 
of  repudiation.  Shaftesbury,  who  became  the  most 
influential  moralist  of  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  did  but  develop  the  naturalistic  principle  on 
avowedly  theistic  and  non-Christian  lines.  Bishop 
Berkeley,  who  assailed  both  Spinoza  and  Shaftes- 
bury, could  justify  his  Christian  beliefs  only  by 
arguing  that  sceptics  themselves,  in  the  study  of 
mathematics,  accepted  many  arbitrary  propositions, 
and  might  as  well  accept  the  mystery  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Even  Locke,  though  he  stood  for  a  "  reasonable  "  and 
non-dogmatic  Christianity,  was  in  effect  an  influence 
for  deism  in  respect  of  his  philosophy. 

All  later  moral  philosophy  of  any  standing  has  been 
either  plainly  non-evangelical  or  essentially  irrecon- 
cilable with  the  Christian  faith.  Even  the  argumen- 
tation of  Bishop  Butler  (1736)  has  no  more  validity 
for  it  than  for  any  other,  and  is  finally  as  favourable 
to  atheism  as  to  theism.  Hume,  who  developed  from 
deism  into  a  final  agnosticism,  was  at  all  stages  anti- 
Christian  in  his  ethic  as  well  as  in  his  metaphysic  and 
his  historical  criticism  of  religion  ;  and  Adam  Smith 
was  strictly  deistic.  The  later  and  deeper  German 
philosophies  of  Kant  and  Fichte  are  no  more  helpful 
to  Christianity,  though  elaborate  attempts  have  been 
made  to  adapt  Kantism  to  its  service  ;  and  though 
Hegel  finally  proposed  to  rehabilitate  its  dogmas,  his 
German  disciples  for  the  most  part  became  anti- 
Christian  ;  one  of  them,  Feuerbach,  becoming  one  of 
the  most  formidable  critics  of  the  faith.  The  profes- 
sionally Christian  moral  philosophies,  such  as  that 
of  Paley  in  England,  have  been  abandoned  by  the 


356  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

sincerely  religious  no  less  than  by  the  students  of 
philosophy.  Coleridge,  seeking  to  give  a  philosophic 
aspect  to  the  faith  of  his  latter  years,  had  to  fall  back 
on  the  "  modal  "  Trinity,  and  could  make  no  judicial 
defence  of  the  doctrines  of  salvation  and  damnation. 

In  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  finally, 
the  balance  of  philosophic  thought  has  been  over- 
whelmingly hostile  to  Christian  beliefs.  Everywhere, 
whether  it  be  professedly  utilitarian  or  "  transcen- 
dental," it  is  essentially  monistic  and  evolutionist ; 
and  while  the  expressly  naturalistic  doctrine,  typified 
in  the  teaching  of  Spencer,  positively  rejects  all 
pretence  of  revelation,  the  spiritistic  schools  do 
nothing  for  historic  religion  beyond  claiming  to  have 
reinstated  a  theism  which  is  not  "providential,"  and 
so  amounts  in  practice  to  pantheism.  The  so-called 
materialism  of  Germany,  represented  by  the  writings 
of  Moleschott  and  Biichner,  though  constantly  assailed 
on  metaphysical  grounds,  is  the  common-sense  con- 
viction of  millions  of  educated  men  ;  and  the  meta- 
physical attack  makes  scarcely  a  pretence  of  claiming 
belief  for  conventional  religion.  Christianity  thus 
subsists  without  anything  that  can  properly  be 
described  as  philosophic  support,  save  as  regards 
some  Catholic  systems  which  rationalists  or  men  of 
science  rarely  take  the  trouble  to  examine. 

§  3.  Biblical  and  Historical  Criticism. 

Most  men,  probably,  accept  or  reject  religious 
creeds  on  the  strength  not  of  any  systematically 
philosophic  reasoning  but  of  either  emotional  bias  or 
common-sense  examination  of  concrete  evidence.  Thus 


BIBLICAL  AND  HISTOKICAL  CEITICISM.  357 

the  main  instruments  in  turning  men  from  Christian 
credences  have  been  the  documentary  and  historical 
forms  of  criticism. 

Such  criticism,  secretly  frequent  among  educated 
men  in  the  sixteenth  century,  never  ventured  into 
print  till  the  seventeenth,  and  even  then  did  so  very 
circumspectly.  English  Deism  begins  its  literary 
existence  with  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  whose  first 
work,  produced  under  French  influences,  appeared  in 
Latin  in  1624.  His  position  was  that  the  doctrine  of 
forgiveness  for  faith  is  immoral ;  that  all  pretences  of 
revelation  are  repugnant  to  moral  reason ;  and  that 
as  all  so-called  revelations  are  sectarian  and  mutually 
exclusive,  human  reason  must  proceed  for  itself  on  a 
basis  of  natural  theism.  Such  audacity  was  possible 
in  virtue  partly  of  the  resort  to  Latin,  partly  of  the 
high  personal  standing  of  the  writer.  The  next  out- 
standing an ti- Christian  work  is  the  Leviathan  (1651) 
of  Hobbes,  who  ventured  to  publish  in  English  under 
the  doctrinally  tolerant  rule  of  Cromwell.  In  his 
treatise,  not  only  is  the  attitude  of  faith  constantly 
disparaged,  but  there  is  made  a  beginning  of  criticism 
of  the  inconsistencies  of  the  Pentateuch.  Such  criti- 
cism seems  to  have  gone  much  further  in  private  dis- 
cussion long  before  that  time ;  and  it  is  clear  from 
many  apologetic  treatises  that  doctrinal  unbelief  was 
abundant ;  but  the  publication  of  a  sceptical  work 
that  could  be  read  by  the  unlearned  marks  an  era  of 
germinating  unbelief.  Spinoza's  Tractatus  Theologico- 
Politicus  (1670)  carries  the  principle  of  rational  textual 
criticism  of  the  Bible  further ;  and  after  the  French 
Catholic  professor  Richard  Simon  had  published  in 
French  his  critical  treatises  on  the  texts  of  the  Old  and 
New  Testaments  (1678  and  1689),  though  these  were 


358  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

prof essedly  orthodox,  Biblical  criticism  began  a  new  life. 
The  first  drastic  attacks  of  a  businesslike  kind  on 
orthodoxy  were  those  of  the  English  Deists  of  the 
early  years  of  the  eighteenth  century,  typified  in  the 
works  of  Anthony  Collins,  who  soberly  and  amiably 
called  in  question  alike  revelation,  prophecy,  and 
miracles.  Soon  such  criticism  was  reinforced  by  the 
enquiry  of  Middleton  into  Roman  Catholic  miracles, 
on  lines  which  implicitly  called  in  question  those  of 
the  gospels ;  and  the  essay  of  Hume  on  miracles  in 
general  put  the  case  against  them  on  grounds  which 
could  be  turned  only  by  arguments  that  evaded 
them.  The  polemic  of  the  whole  French  school  of 
Freethinkers,  headed  by  Voltaire,  thereafter  attacked 
every  aspect  of  Jewish  and  Christian  supernaturalisni 
and  of  Jewish  and  Christian  history  considered  as  a 
moral  dispensation  ;  the  English  Unitarians,  repre- 
sented by  Priestley,  made  a  number  of  converts  to 
their  compromise  ;  and  when  Gibbon  came  to  deal  with 
the  rise  of  Christianity  in  his  great  work  (1776-88), 
he  set  forth  on  naturalistic  grounds  a  tentative  socio- 
logical explanation  which  could  not  be  overthrown  by 
orthodox  methods,  and  is  to  be  superseded  only  by  a 
more  searching  analysis  on  the  same  lines.  So 
decisive  was  the  total  effect  of  the  critical  attack  that 
in  the  last  quarter  of  the  century  many  German 
theologians  within  the  Church  had  begun  to  deal  with 
the  supernatural  elements  in  the  Old  Testament  on 
rationalistic  though  temporising  methods,  and  some 
had  even  begun  to  apply  the  same  treatment  to  the 
New.  Finally  came,  in  England,  the  powerful 
common-sense  attack  of  Thomas  Paine  (1793),  which 
at  once  set  up  a  movement  of  popular  rationalism 
that  has  never  since  ceased. 


BIBLICAL  AND  HISTOKICAL  CRITICISM.  359 

To  all  such  rationalism,  however,  a  strong  check 
was  set  up  for  a  whole  generation,  especially  in 
England,  by  the  universal  reaction  against  the  French 
Revolution.  Hitherto  the  upper  classes,  there  as  in 
France,  had  been  noted  mainly  for  unbelief  in 
religious  matters ;  but  when  it  was  seen  from  the 
course  of  the  Revolution  that  heterodoxy  could  join 
hands  with  democracy,  there  was  a  rapid  change  of 
front,  on  the  simple  ground  of  class  interest.  During 
the  first  generation  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
accordingly,  all  English  freethinking  was  driven 
under  the  social  surface,  and  classed  as  disreputable, 
so  that  it  was  possible  to  assume  a  great  revival  of 
faith.  In  France,  similarly,  the  literary  pietism  of 
Chateaubriand  seemed  to  have  crowned  with  success 
the  official  restoration  of  the  Church's  authority ;  and 
even  the  intellectual  revival  was  associated  with 
Christian  zeal  on  the  part  of  such  energetic  per- 
sonalities as  Guizot.  Even  in  Germany,  though 
there  the  work  of  Biblical  criticism  on  rationalist 
lines  went  steadily  on,  there  was  a  pietist  revival. 
Before  the  middle  of  the  century  was  reached, 
however,  it  was  clear  that  in  France  and  Germany 
rationalism  was  in  full  renascence ;  and  in  England, 
where  such  facts  are  less  readily  avowed,  scholarly 
writings  even  in  the  fourth  decade  had  begun  to  prove 
the  solidarity  of  European  culture. 

As  regards  Biblical  criticism,  there  appears  to  be 
a  certain  periodicity  of  action.  In  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  the  work  done  was  mainly  of  the 
common-sense  order,  the  French  physician  Jean 
Astruc  laid  down  a  basis  for  exact  documentary  analysis 
by  pointing  to  the  two  elements  of  Yahwist  (Jehovist) 
and  Elohist  narrative  as  indicating  two  distinct  sources. 


360  MODEEN  CHRISTIANITY. 

On  such  lines  the  earlier  German  scholars  of  the 
nineteenth  century  long  laboured,  till  the  common- 
sense  criticism  was  lost  sight  of.  In  the  meantime, 
however,  a  long  line  of  partially  rationalist  criticism 
of  the  New  Testament  culminated  in  the  Life  of 
Jesus  by  Strauss ;  and  educated  Christendom  was 
shaken  to  its  foundations,  insofar  as  it  ventured  to 
read.  Side  by  side  with  that  of  Strauss,  there  pro- 
ceeded in  Germany  a  great  movement  of  documentary 
and  historical  analysis,  till  professional  theology  there 
became  almost  identified  with  the  surrender  of  Chris- 
tian supernaturalism. 

As  the  critical  movement  proceeded  in  England,  it 
came  about  that  an  admired  dignitary  of  its  Church, 
Bishop  Colenso,  was  convinced  on  common-sense  lines 
of  the  utterly  unhistorical  character  of  the  main 
Pentateuchal  narrative,  and  courageously  published 
his  views  (1862).  From  that  point  the  European 
criticism  of  the  Old  Testament,  which  had  been  pro- 
ceeding on  the  assumption  of  the  genuineness  of  the 
narrative,  took  a  new  course  with  such  rapid  success 
that  within  a  generation  the  whole  mass  of  the  Old 
Testament  had  been  either  decisively  or  provisionally 
reduced,  chiefly  by  Dutch  and  German  scholars,  to  a 
variety  of  sources  never  wholly  in  accordance  with 
the  traditional  ascription,  and  representing  collectively 
a  vast  historical  process  of  fabrication.  In  the  face  of 
the  facts,  the  claim  of  "inspiration"  still  made  for  the 
books,  by  some  of  the  scholars  who  expound  the  pro- 
cess of  their  composition,  is  naturally  treated  with 
indifference  by  educated  men  not  professionally  com- 
mitted to  such  a  position. 

With  whatever  bias  the  problem  be  approached,  all 
really  critical  study  of  the  documents  latterly  tells 


BIBLICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM.  361 

against  the  Christian  position.  Writers  who,  like 
Renan,  have  treated  Christian  origins  in  a  spirit  of 
literary  sympathy  with  that  of  belief,  none  the  less 
undo  faith,  and  offer  at  best  a  sentimental  historical 
construction  in  place  of  the  destroyed  tradition.  The 
orthodox  defence,  on  the  other  hand,  grows  rapidly 
less  confident  in  the  hands  of  scholarly  men.  The 
latest  development  of  professional  study,  as  set  forth 
in  the  English  Encyclopedia  Biblica,  shows  a  progres- 
sive collapse  of  the  traditional  belief  on  almost  every 
detail,  some  continental  theologians  now  going 
further  in  their  rejection  of  it  than  many  professed 
rationalists. 


CHAPTER  III. 

POPULAK   ACCEPTANCE. 

§  1.  Catholic  Christianity. 

ALL  through  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries, 
and  till  near  the  end  of  the  nineteenth,  the  masses  of 
Europe  remained  attached  to  their  respective  churches 
in  despite  of  the  play  of  criticism  among  the  more 
instructed.  Whether  popular  religion  be  regarded  as 
a  matter  of  habit  and  superstition  or  as  the  expression 
of  a  higher  happiness  in  religious  rites,  it  has  unques- 
tionably numbered  the  great  majority  down  till  recent 
times.  How  the  Catholic  Church  recovered  large  parts 
of  Germany,  practically  all  Poland  and  Bohemia,  and 
for  a  time  the  complete  control  of  France,  we  have 
seen.  Within  her  sphere,  popular  conduct  was  cer- 
tainly no  worse  than  in  the  age  of  her  undivided 
power ;  and  where  she  could  number  within  her  fold 
minds  like  Paolo  Sarpi,  the  historian  of  the  Council  of 
Trent,  in  the  sixteenth  century ;  like  Pascal  and 
Fenelon  and  Bossuet  in  the  seventeenth;  and  like 
Vico  in  the  eighteenth,  though  in  hardly  any  case  are 
such  leading  spirits  found  to  be  in  thorough  harmony 
with  the  papal  system,  she  could  not  but  hold  the 
respect  of  a  great  body  even  of  educated  people. 

Her  swarms  of  missionaries,  too,  seemed  for  a  time 
to  have  begun  a  new  era  of  Catholic  expansion  in  Asia 
and  America,  finding  footing  in  the  sixteenth  and 

362 


CATHOLIC  CHRISTIANITY.  363 

seventeenth  centuries  in  Japan,  China,  India,  Siam, 
Tonkin,  as  well  as  in  North  and  South  America.  Sent 
forth  by  the  College  of  Propaganda  fCongregatio  de 
Propaganda  Fide)  founded  in  1622,  they  displayed  a 
zeal  never  surpassed  in  the  Church's  history.  In 
Japan  and  China,  in  particular,  they  had  for  a  time  a 
dazzling  success,  largely  through  the  address  of  the 
Jesuits — whose  policy  was  to  win  converts  by  identi- 
fying native  rites  and  beliefs  with  Christian,  never 
openly  assailing  but  always  seeking  to  assimilate  them. 
As  early  as  1549,  Francis  Xavier  had  preached  the 
faith  in  Japan,  and  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century  it  seemed  likely  to  become  the  religion  of  the 
State.  But  Christians  undid  the  Christian  cause. 
Between  the  various  orders  of  Catholic  missionaries 
there  were  always  deadly  jealousies,  all  the  others 
denouncing  the  Jesuits,  who  in  turn  charged  incom- 
petence and  malevolence  on  all ;  and  the  visible 
prosperity  of  the  propagandists  in  Japan  gave  colour 
to  the  hints  of  the  Protestant  traders,  Dutch  and 
English,  that  Catholic  missions  were  a  prelude  to 
Catholic  conquest.  The  Japanese  emperor,  accord- 
ingly, began  a  great  persecution  in  1587,  and  during 
a  number  of  years  the  Christian  converts  were 
slaughtered  by  tens  of  thousands.  Still  the  Jesuits 
persevered ;  but  in  the  next  generation  persecution 
began  afresh.  At  length,  in  1637,  by  a  supreme 
effort,  the  weakened  Catholic  flock  were  wholly 
destroyed  or  expelled.  Once  more  it  had  been  demon- 
strated that  really  determined  and  rigorous  persecu- 
tion by  a  majority  in  power  can  eradicate  the  Christian 
or  any  other  religion  in  a  given  sphere. 

In  Siam  in  the  next  century  a  slight  success  was 
similarly  followed  by  expulsion  ;  and  in  China,  where 


364  MODERN  CHBISTIANITY. 

an  outward  success  had  been  won  as  a  sequel  to  the 
expansion  in  Japan,  and  where  the  Christian  cause 
subsisted  longer,  despite  some  persecution  and  despite 
the  fierce  dissensions  of  the  different  orders  on  points 
both  of  doctrine  and  corporate  conduct,  it  dwindled  in 
the  eighteenth  century.  The  success,  indeed,  had 
been  all  along  illusory,  as  the  Chinese  had  adapted 
rather  than  adopted  Christian  forms,  and  merely 
carried  on  their  usual  rites  under  Christian  auspices. 
When,  accordingly,  the  rival  orders  at  length  forced 
on  the  papacy,  in  the  teeth  of  the  Jesuits,  a  decision 
as  to  whether  Chinese  Christians  should  or  should  not 
truly  conform  to  Christian  doctrine,  and  a  decision 
against  the  Jesuits  was  given,  the  semblance  of  don- 
version  melted  away,  and  a  reversion  to  Jesuit 
methods  could  not  restore  it.  A  similar  decision  made 
an  end  of  a  rather  flourishing  movement  of  Jesuit 
Brahmanism  in  India  about  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century ;  and  the  other  labours  of  the 
Catholic  missionaries  in  India  were  undone  by  the 
cruelties  of  their  own  Inquisition. 

Jesuitism  had  by  this  time  been  convicted  of  aiming 
in  the  old  fashion  at  its  own  worldly  wealth,  of 
troubling  by  its  political  plottings  the  peace  of  every 
country  it  could  enter,  and  of  setting  up  its  own 
ambitions  against  the  papal  authority.  In  the  East  it 
had  become  a  great  wealth-hunting  corporation ;  in 
South  America  it  was  the  same,  contriving  for  some 
generations  to  govern  Paraguay  in  particular  wholly 
for  its  own  enrichment ;  in  Europe  it  provoked  every 
Catholic  government  in  turn  by  its  audacious  attempts 
to  control  them.  Thus  it  was  expelled  from  Portugal 
in  1759,  from  France  in  1762,  from  Bohemia  in  1766  ; 
from  Spain,  Genoa,  and  Venice  in  1767 ;  and  from 


CATHOLIC  CHKISTIANITY.  3G5 

Naples,  Malta,  and  Parma  in  1768.  At  length,  in 
1773,  the  Society  was  suppressed  by  a  papal  bull,  and 
though  it  was  revived  in  the  nineteenth  century  it 
has  never  since  been  the  power  it  was,  whether  for 
evil  or  for  good. 

Of  her  extensions  beyond  Europe  there  thus  remained 
substantially  to  the  Church  of  Rome  at  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century  only  the  Catholic  populations 
of  Central  and  South  America  and  Canada ;  and  at 
the  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution,  marked  as  it 
was  by  the  wholesale  abjurations  of  Catholic  priests 
and  populace,  it  might  have  seemed  as  if  the  reign 
of  Rome  in  Europe  were  coming  to  an  end.  The 
political  movement,  however,  had  outrun  the  educa- 
tional ;  and  as  we  have  seen,  there  was  even  a  literary 
reaction  at  the  Restoration.  In  Italy,  where  the 
revolutionary  movement  had  been  hostile  to  the 
Church,  the  reaction  after  1815  was  very  marked. 
All  criticism  of  Catholicism  was  made  a  penal  offence, 
and  in  the  Kingdom  of  Naples  alone,  in  1825,  there 
were  twenty-seven  thousand  priests,  eight  thousand 
nuns,  as  many  monks,  twenty  archbishops,  and 
seventy-three  bishops.  In  Spain  and  France,  too,  the 
clergy  worked  hard  to  recover  authority  over  the 
people  ;  and  in  Catholic  Ireland  they  had  never  lost 
it,  despite  all  the  efforts  of  Protestantism. 

Everywhere,  however,  save  in  America,  the  struggle 
for  existence  has  gone  against  Catholicism  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  Catholic  Ireland  has  been  in 
large  measure  depopulated  through  the  failure  of 
Protestant  England  to  solve  its  economic  problems  ; 
and  though  this  means  a  gain  to  Romanism  in  the 
United  States,  there  is  no  great  likelihood  that  that  is 
permanent,  or  that  Catholicism  there  will  ever  be  verv 


366  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

docile  to  the  papacy.  France  has  become  gradually 
more  rationalistic,  so  much  so  that  the  municipal 
government  of  Paris  is  usually  in  the  hands  of  free- 
thinkers ;  and  the  recent  expulsion  of  the  recalcitrant 
religious  orders  has  proved  the  determination  of  the 
republican  majority  to  put  down  clerical  influence. 
The  movement  of  anti- theological  Positivism,  founded 
by  the  teaching  of  Auguste  Comte  (d.  1857)  on  bases 
laid  by  Saint- Simon,  has  never  been  numerically 
strong,  but  has  affected  all  French  thought ;  and  to- 
day there  is  scarcely  one  eminent  French  writer  who 
professes  religious  opinions.  Even  in  Spain,  so  long 
the  stronghold  of  the  faith,  and  still  more  generally 
in  Italy,  educated  men  are  as  a  rule  either  indifferent 
or  hostile  to  the  Church;  and  the  common  people, 
especially  the  Socialists  in  the  towns,  have  gone  the 
same  way.  Both  in  Spain  and  Portugal,  there  are 
journals  zealously  devoted  to  a  propaganda  of  free- 
thought.  National  union  in  Italy,  accomplished  in 
the  middle  of  the  century,  has  been  fatal  to  eccle- 
siastical supremacy.  The  Papacy  is  unable  to  recover 
its  temporal  power  at  Rome ;  and  its  impotent  com- 
plaints have  ceased  to  be  dignified.  In  Catholic 
Belgium,  the  action  of  the  clergy  is  constantly  fought 
by  a  ubiquitous  freethought  propaganda ;  and  Dutch 
Catholicism  does  not  gain  ground. 

Some  appearance  of  Catholic  revival  occurred  in 
England  in  the  second  and  third  generations  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  "  Oxford  movement"  pre- 
paring the  ground  ;  but  though  John  Henry  Newman 
was  followed  into  the  Catholic  Church  by  a  number  of 
clergymen  and  rich  laymen,  the  movement  soon  ceased 
to  be  intellectually  important,  and  the  popular  success 
seems  to  have  reached  its  limits.  Though  there  is 


;  CATHOLIC  CHRISTIANITY.  367 

much  leaning  to  Rome  in  the  High  Church  section  of 
the  heterogeneous  Anglican  body,  it  is  certain  that 
while  the  economic  basis  remains  Protestant  there  will 
be  no  great  secession.  Economic  considerations, 
again,  have  latterly  set  up  even  in  Catholic  Austria — 
which  with  Southern  Germany  is  perhaps  the  most 
believing  section  of  the  Catholic  world — a  movement 
with  the  watchword  "  Loose  from  Rome."  In  Brazil, 
finally,  there  has  been  a  quite  extraordinary  develop- 
ment of  Positivism  among  the  educated  class;  and 
the  revolution  which  peacefully  expelled  the  last 
emperor — himself  personally  estimable,  and  not  an 
orthodox  Catholic — was  ostensibly  wrought  by  the 
Positivist  party. 

Thus  the  generation  which  saw  the  promulgation  of 
the  formal  decree  of  Papal  Infallibility  (1870)  has  seen 
the  most  vital  decline  that  has  ever  taken  place  in  the 
total  life  and  power  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  It  pre- 
serves its  full  hold  to-day  only  on  (1)  the  most 
ignorant  or  most  rural  sections  of  the  population  of 
Catholic  countries,  (2)  the  unintellectual  sections  of 
their  middle  and  upper  classes,  and  (3)  the  emotionally 
religious  or  pietistic  types,  who  are  still,  by  reason  of 
the  total  circumstances,  more  numerous  among  women 
than  among  men.  Hence  in  the  Catholic  countries, 
female  education  being  there  specially  backward,  the 
church  depends  relatively  even  more  on  women  than 
do  the  churches  of  the  Protestant  countries.  But 
among  women  in  the  Catholic  countries  also  there 
goes  on  a  process  of  rationalisation,  Socialism  doing 
some  of  the  work  of  education  where  the  other 
machinery  is  inadequate. 


MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 


§  2.  Protestant  Christianity. 

The  failure  of  Protestantism  to  gain  any  ground  in 
Europe  after  the  sixteenth  century  had  naturally  the 
effect  of  increasing  the  zeal  of  its  adherents  within 
their  own  sphere ;  and  though  nowhere  did  Protestant 
organisation  compare  in  energy  with  that  shown  by 
the  Society  of  Jesus  and  the  Eoman  College  of  Propa- 
ganda, the  system  of  popular  education  in  several 
countries — as  Switzerland,  Scotland,  and  parts  of 
Germany — was  raised  much  above  the  popular  Catholic 
level.  Presbyterians  in  particular  felt  the  need  of 
popular  schools  for  the  maintenance  of  their  polity. 
The  result  was,  after  a  time,  a  certain  improvement 
in  the  capacity  and  conditions  of  the  common  people 
where  other  causes  did  not  interfere.  Thus  the  Pro- 
testant cantons  of  Switzerland  have  in  general  been 
noted  for  greater  material  prosperity  than  the  Catholic ; 
and  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  Presby- 
terian Scotland,  though  naturally  much  the  poorer 
country,  admittedly  turned  out  a  larger  proportion  of 
men  qualified  for  responsible  positions  than  did 
episcopalian  England. 

All  the  while,  the  influence  of  a  Presbyterian  clergy, 
in  touch  with  the  people  and  able  to  ostracise  socially 
those  who  avowed  unbelief,  maintained  in  the  Calvin- 
istic  countries  a  higher  average  of  orthodoxy,  the 
normal  effect  of  higher  education  being  thus  checked 
on  the  side  of  religion.  Scotland  contributed  little  to 
the  earlier  deistic  movement  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
Smith  and  Hume  having  taken  it  up  after  it  had 
flourished  for  a  generation  in  England ;  and  at  no 
time  was  rationalism  socially  avowed  to  the  same 


PROTESTANT  CHRISTIANITY.  369 

extent  in  the  north  as  in  the  south,  the  enlightenment 
of  the  lay  authors  being  confined  to  a  small  town 
circle. 

On  the  moral  and  aesthetic  side,  however,  popular 
Presbyterianism  tended  to  be  hard  and  joyless,  with 
the  natural  result,  seen  alike  in  Geneva  and  in  Scot- 
land, of  breeding  much  licence.  On  the  other  hand 
there  arose  a  higher  reaction,  towards  intellectual 
interests ;  and  the  Switzerland  of  the  eighteenth 
century  produced  a  remarkably  large  proportion  of 
scientific  men ;  while  in  Scotland,  where  centuries  of 
theological  life  and  strife  set  up  even  in  the  Church  a 
notable  spirit  of  "moderation,"  both  the  physical  and 
the  moral  or  social  sciences  were  conspicuously  culti- 
vated. Popular  freethinking  was  beginning  to  follow 
in  both  cases,  when  the  reaction  against  the  French 
Revolution  arose  to  arrest  it.  When  in  the  next 
generation  there  began  in  Scotland  the  ecclesiastical 
struggle  which  ended  in  the  formation  of  the  Free 
Church  (1842)  a  new  impulse  was  given  to  doctrinal 
fanaticism,  which  the  competition  of  three  rival 
Presbyterian  churches  was  well  fitted  to  maintain. 

Thus,  though  Scottish  scholars  have  contributed 
largely  to  the  "  higher  criticism,"  the  middle  and 
working  classes  of  Scotland  all  through  the  nineteenth 
century  have  been  at  least  outwardly  more  orthodox 
than  even  those  of  England.  They,  too,  however,  have 
begun  to  exhibit  the  common  critical  tendencies.  As 
the  results  of  Biblical  criticism  become  more  generally 
known,  church  attendance  tends  to  fall  off,  despite  the 
economic  pressure  churchmen  are  able  to  use  in  small 
communities.  It  is  perhaps  as  much  on  account  of  the 
common  need  as  by  reason  of  the  growth  of  liberality 
that  the  two  chief  dissenting  Scottish  Churches,  the 

BB 


370  MODEKN  CHKISTIANITY. 

Free  and  the  United  Presbyterian  (Voluntary),  have 
recently  amalgamated.  Were  it  not  that  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  more  energetic  and  stirring  youth  of 
the  country  leave  it  for  England  and  the  colonies,  the 
more  conservative  staying,  the  process  of  change 
would  probably  be  more  rapid. 

In  the  small  communities  of  Protestant  Switzer- 
land, a  democratic  church  polity  has  equally  served  to 
maintain  a  greater  stress  of  orthodox  belief  and  prac- 
tice than  is  seen  in  surrounding  countries  ;  and  the 
appointment  of  Strauss  to  a  chair  of  theology  at 
Zurich  by  a  Kadical  Government  in  1839  led  to  -an 
actual  insurrection,  set  up  and  led  by  fanatical  clergy- 
men. Catholic  cantons  later  showed  themselves  no 
less  medieval.  Nothing,  however,  avails  to  shut  out 
critical  thought ;  Zeller  received  a  chair  at  Berne  in 
1847  ;  rationalism  has  ever  since  steadily  progressed  ; 
the  number  of  theological  students  as  steadily  falls  off ; 
and  among  the  Swiss  theologians  of  to-day  are  some  of 
the  most  "  subversive"  of  the  professional  writers  on 
Christian  origins.  Popular  rationalism  necessarily 
begins  to  follow,  though  less  rapidly  than  in  countries 
where  the  people  and  the  clergy  do  not  ecclesiastically 
govern  themselves. 

In  Protestant  Holland  and  the  Scandinavian  States, 
of  late  years,  the  decline  of  Christian  faith  has  been 
still  more  marked.  All  are  considerably  influenced  by 
German  culture ;  and  in  Protestant  Germany  ortho- 
doxy is  gradually  disappearing.  There  the  long 
depression  of  civilisation  begun  by  the  troubles 
of  the  Reformation,  and  clinched  by  the  vast  calamity 
of  the  Thirty  Years  War,  was  favourable  to  a  sombre 
religious  feeling ;  and  this  actually  prevailed  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  triumphing 


PROTESTANT  CHRISTIANITY.  371 

over  a  movement  of  spontaneous  freethinking.  Peace 
and  the  development  of  universities  thereafter  built 
up  a  learned  class,  who  especially  cultivated  eccle- 
siastical history  ;  and  as  we  have  seen,  German 
theology  had  become  in  the  primary  sense  rational- 
istic by  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  After  the 
fall  of  Napoleon  there  began  in  earnest  the  education 
of  the  Prussian  common  people  ;  and  though  to  this 
day  the  learned  class  are  more  apart  from  the  general 
public  in  Germany  than  in  most  other  countries,  the 
latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  seen  a  great 
development  of  popular  secularism. 

In  1881,  the  church  accommodation  in  Berlin 
sufficed  for  only  2  per  cent,  of  the  population,  and 
even  that  was  not  at  all  fully  used.  This  is  the  social 
aspect  of  Protestant  Germany ;  and  it  effectively  con- 
futes the  periodic  statements  as  to  revivals  of 
orthodoxy  in  the  universities.  Such  revivals  are 
officially  engineered  and  financially  stimulated  :  the 
mass  of  the  people  of  Protestant  Germany,  at  least  in 
the  towns,  have  practically  given  up  the  Christian 
creed,  even  when  they  do  not  renounce  their  nominal 
membership  in  the  State  church ;  and  the  great  Social- 
istic party,  which  contains  over  two  millions  of  adult 
males,  is  pronouncedly  rationalistic.  In  Scandinavia, 
the  literary  influence  of  such  masters  of  drama  and 
fiction  as  Ibsen  and  Bjornson  creates  a  freethinking 
spirit  on  a  very  wide  scale  among  the  middle  classes, 
though  the  clergy  are  illiberal;  and  in  Holland, where 
the  churches  are  increasingly  latitudinarian,  there  is 
a  more  competent  journalistic  propaganda  of  rational- 
ism than  in  perhaps  any  other  country. 

That  the  same  general  movement  of  things  goes  on 
in  England  may  be  proved  by  reference  to  the  almost 


372  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

daily    complaints  of    the   clergy.     Rationalism    and 
secularism  have  advanced  in  all  classes  during  half 
a  century,  until  their  propaganda  is  accepted  as  a 
quite  normal    activity  ;    such    writers    as    Spencer, 
Darwin,  Huxley,  and  Clifford  being  read  by  the  more 
studious  of  all  ranks.    Churchgoing  constantly  declines 
in  the  towns  ;  agnosticism  becomes  more  and  more 
common  among  the  educated  classes ;  the  average  of 
the  workers  in  the  large  towns  are  fixedly  alienated 
from  the  Church ;  and  the  latter-day  propaganda  of 
the  Salvation  Army  affects  only  the  less  intelligent 
types  even  since,  after  refusing  for  twenty  years  *  to 
deal  with  material  problems,  it  has  sought  to  establish 
itself  as  a  charitable  organisation  for  dealing  with  the 
"  lapsed  masses."     As  regards  the  general  influence 
of  the   churches  it  is  observable  that  whereas  fifty 
years  ago  there  were  many  clergymen  and  prelates 
noted  as  important  writers  on  non- theological  matters, 
and  whereas  even  a  few  years  ago  there  were  still 
several  bishops  distinguished   as    scholars   and    his- 
torians, there  are  now  none  so  describable.     So,  in 
the  department  of  fine  letters,  there  is  scarcely  a  poet 
or  novelist  of  high   standing  who   can  be   called  a 
believing   Christian.      In  the  last   generation   some 
distinguished  men  who  were  openly  heterodox,  as  the 
late  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  or  very  dubiously  orthodox, 
as  Mr.  Lecky,  were  wont  to  profess  themselves  good 
members  of  the  Church  of  England  ;  but  the  normal 
tendency  of  rationalists  is  now  to  give  the  churches 
up.     The  leading  names  in  serious  and  even  imagina- 
tive literature,  with  a  few  exceptions  which  stand  for 
popularity  rather  than  weight,  are  those  of  known 
unbelievers. 

Of  the  state  of  thought  in  the  United  States  it  is 


PROTESTANT  CHRISTIANITY.  373 

difficult  to  speak  with  precision.  The  latitude  allowed 
to  or  taken  by  the  majority  of  the  clergy  keeps  within 
the  ostensible  pale  of  the  numerous  churches  much 
opinion  that  elsewhere  would  rank  as  extremely 
heterodox ;  and  it  is  from  American  churchmen  that 
there  has  come  the  project  of  the  so-called  "  Rainbow 
Bible,"  in  which  the  heterogeneous  sources  of  the 
Old  Testament  books  are  indicated  by  printing  in 
variously  coloured  inks.  As  in  all  countries  where 
the  clergy  are  democratically  in  touch  with  the  people, 
the  breach  between  authority  and  modern  thought  is 
thus  less  marked  than  in  the  sphere  of  the  Catholic 
and  Anglican  churches.  But  in  such  a  civilisation, 
development  is  inevitably  continuous. 

In  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
prevailing  creed  of  New  England,  then  noted  for 
"  plain  living  and  high  thinking,"  was  Unitarianism. 
This  seems  to  have  grown  rapidly  after  the  Revo- 
lution, partly  from  seed  sown  by  Priestley,  who  made 
New  England  his  home,  partly  from  the  Deism  of  the 
educated  class.  Nearly  all  the  leaders  of  the  Revo- 
lution —  Washington,  Paine,  Franklin,  Jefferson, 
Adams — had  been  Deists.  But  Deism  is  an  incon- 
venient creed  for  public  men  in  a  church-going  or 
clerically-influenced  world ;  and  Unitarianism,  with 
its  decorous  worship  and  use  of  the  Bible,  was  a  con- 
venient compromise.  Later  "  transcendental "  teach- 
ing, such  as  the  movement  around  Emerson,  led  men 
in  the  same  direction.  Latterly,  however,  the  Uni- 
tarian congregations  relatively  dwindle ;  and  while 
some  of  the  defection  stands  for  the  relapse  of  the 
children  from  the  strenuous  thought  of  their  fathers, 
some  stands  for  complete  abandonment  of  the  habit  of 
worship. 


374  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

At  the  same  time,  popular  rationalism  has  been 
greatly  diffused  in  the  United  States  by  the  lecturing 
of  the  late  Colonel  Ingersoll,  one  of  the  greatest 
orators  of  his  time,  as  was  his  contemporary  Charles 
Bradlaugh  in  England.  Each  of  those  men  probably 
convinced  more  of  his  fellow  countrymen  of  the 
untruth  of  the  Christian  creed  than  were  ever 
rationally  persuaded  of  its  truth  by  any  preacher  or 
teacher  of  modern  times.  What  preserves  the  form 
of  faith  in  the  States  is  probably  less  the  socio- 
economic  pressure  seen  so  commonly  in  England  and 
Scotland  (since  all  life  is  franker  and  freer  in  the  New 
World,  especially  in  the  West)  than  the  simple  lack  of 
leisure  for  study  in  a  community  where  competition 
for  income  drives  all  men  at  a  pace  that  almost  seems 
to  belie  prosperity.  A  shrewd  and  pliable  clergy 
keeps  itself  rather  better  abreast  of  new  scholarship 
and  criticism  than  does  the  mass  of  the  flock ;  and 
men  and  women  who  first  learn  from  the  pulpit  some- 
thing of  the  change  of  view  passing  over  Biblical 
study  are  not  apt  to  turn  away  from  the  teacher  as 
Europeans  do  from  an  unteachable  priest.  But  despite 
all  accommodation  the  sense  of  an  absolute  change  is 
diffused,  and  there  is  record  of  western  preachers 
bidding  farewell  to  the  pulpit  and  being  chorussed  by 
laymen  forsaking  the  pew. 

In  strict  keeping  with  the  shrinkage  of  faith  among 
the  " higher"  races  is  the  expenditure  of  effort  to 
spread  it  among  the  "  lower."  Faith  naturally  seeks 
the  comfort  of  converts  at  lower  intellectual  levels ; 
and  it  is  in  some  quarters  able  to  report  a  certain 
expansion  of  territory  by  such  means.  But  the  total 
statistics  of  Protestant  missions  tell  only  of  handfuls 
of  converts  scattered  among  the  yellow  and  brown 


PKOTESTANT  CHRISTIANITY.  375 

and  black  races,  a  number  grotesquely  disproportionate 
to  the  immense  outlay.  This  goes  on  in  virtue  of 
the  still  sufficient  wealth  of  the  churches,  which  are 
in  consistency  bound  to  respond  to  missionary  appeals 
while  they  profess  belief  in  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
salvation.  It  is  found,  however,  that  the  missionary 
system  needs,  to  maintain  it,  either  an  ever  more 
substantial  stipend  or  some  other  opportunity  of  gain 
to  the  individual  missionary ;  and  the  triviality  of  the 
results  becomes  increasingly  discouraging  to  all  save 
the  most  fervent  faith.  Disparagement  of  missionary 
labours  on  both  moral  and  political  grounds  is 
probably  more  common  among  professed  churchmen 
than  among  unbelievers,  who  sometimes,  as  in  the 
case  of  Darwin,  bear  cordial  testimony  to  the  merits 
and  the  success  of  some  missionaries  as  against  the 
egoism  of  the  normal  trader  in  his  relations  with  the 
undeveloped  races. 

The  final  problem  of  Protestantism  is  its  collective 
relation  to  Catholicism;  and  in  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  many  Protestants  still  hoped  to 
gain  ground  at  the  expense  of  the  Church  of  Rome, 
now  that  propaganda  was  free.  No  such  success, 
however,  has  taken  place.  It  is  found  on  the  con- 
trary that  the  devotional  types  tend  to  revert  from 
Protestantism  to  Rome,  while  those  who  reject  Catho- 
licism rarely  become  Protestants.  In  France  this  is 
peculiarly  apparent.  At  the  Revolution,  it  was  found 
that  proportionally  as  many  Protestant  pastors  as 
Catholic  priests  were  ready  to  abjure  their  creed.  In 
the  religious  reaction  both  churches  alike  regained 
ground;  and  the  Protestant  Church  in  France  has 
always  had  adherents  distinguished  for  learning  and 
moral  earnestness.  To-day,  however,  though  its 


376  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

members  are  relatively  numerous  in  places  of  poli- 
tical power,  by  reason  doubtless  of  their  serious  and 
practical  education,  their  Church  does  not  make  any 
corresponding  gains.  Its  numbers  dwindle  as  steadily 
as  those  of  the  Catholic  mass  ;  and  there  is  no  prospect 
that  it  will  recover  strength  through  Catholic  defec- 
tions. In  Austria,  the  anti-Kornan  movement  already 
mentioned  may  conceivably  give  rise  to  a  non-Romish 
Church  ;  but  it  is  impossible  to  forecast  the  issue. 


§  3.  Greek  Christianity. 

It  is  the  pride  of  the  Greek  Church  to  call  itself 
Orthodox;  and  in  no  part  of  Christendom  has  the 
faith  had  less  to  fear  from  unbelief.  Mere  sectarian 
strife,  indeed,  has  never  been  lacking ;  and  at  the 
very  moment  of  the  fall  of  Constantinople  there  was 
deadly  schism  between  the  orthodox  and  those  who 
were  politically  willing  to  unite  with  the  Latin  Church. 
But  vital  heresy  never  throve.  Political  vicissitude 
in  the  Eastern  empire,  from  Constantine  onwards, 
seems  always  to  have  thrown  the  balance  of  force  on 
the  side  of  religious  conservatism  ;  and  so  devoid  is 
Greek  ecclesiastical  history  since  the  Middle  Ages  of 
any  element  of  innovating  life  that  the  student  is 
tempted  almost  to  surmise  a  national  loss  of  faculty. 
Greek  intellectual  life  since  the  fall  of  Constantinople, 
however,  is  only  a  steady  sequence  from  that  which 
went  before.  After  the  overthrow  of  the  Latin 
kingdom  set  up  by  the  Crusaders,  and  the  restora- 
tion of  Greek  rule,  the  whole  nation  was  very 
naturally  thrown  back  on  its  traditions,  recoiling 
from  further  contact  with  the  West ;  and  the  process 


GBEEK  CHRISTIANITY.  377 

of  fixation  was  repeated  for  what  of  Greek  life  was 
left  after  the  Turkish  conquest.  The  extraordinary 
gift  for  despotic  government  shown  by  the  first  race 
of  Ottoman  Turks  brought  about  a  resigned  degrada- 
tion on  the  Christian  side.  Allowed  a  sufficient 
measure  of  toleration  to  make  them  "  prefer  the 
domination  of  the  Sultan  to  that  of  any  Christian 
potentate,"  they  paid  to  him  not  only  their  taxes  but, 
for  a  time,  a  large  annual  tribute  of  children,  with 
perfect  submission,  and  thus,  in  the  words  of  the 
British  historian  of  modern  Greece,  "  sank  with 
wonderful  rapidity,  and  without  an  effort,  into  the 
most  abject  slavery."  Many  indeed  became  Moham- 
medans to  escape  the  tribute  of  children,  which  after 
a  time  ceased  to  be  exacted,  becoming  rare  in  the 
seventeenth  century. 

In  such  circumstances  the  Christian  priesthood  and 
remaining  laity  were  thrown  very  closely  together, 
somewhat  as  happened  in  Ireland  under  English 
rule,  and  the  result  was  a  perfect  devotion  on  the 
part  of  the  Greek  peasantry  to  their  creed.  It  is 
accordingly  claimed  as  the  force  which  preserved 
their  nationality.  But  the  nationality  so  preserved 
could  not  well  do  much  credit  to  the  creed,  which,  in 
turn,  gave  Greeks  a  ground  of  differentiation  from  their 
conquerors  without  supplying  any  force  of  retrieval 
or  progress.  What  was  secured  was  not  moral  union 
but  merely  doctrinal  persistence  in  the  state  of  sub- 
jection ;  and  the  conqueror  "  availed  himself  of  the 
hoary  bigotry  and  infantine  vanity  of  Hellenic  dotage 
to  use  the  Greek  church  as  a  means  of  enslaving  the 
nation."  The  first  Sultan  sagaciously  appointed  a 
conservative  Patriarch,  and  left  Christian  disputes 
alone.  The  result  was  that  the  Church  was  kept 


378  MODEKN  CHRISTIANITY. 

impotent  by  its  own  quarrels  and  corruptions.  Unity 
of  forms  alone  remained  ;  simony  "  became  a  part  of 
the  constitution  of  the  Orthodox  Church,"  the  women 
of  the  Sultan's  harem  selling  Christian  ecclesiastical 
offices ;  and  Christian  life  as  such  set  up  in  the 
Moslem  onlookers  an  immovable  contempt.  "  No 
more  selfish  and  degraded  class  of  men  has  ever  held 
power,"  says  Finlay,  "than  the  archonts  of  modern 
Greece  and  the  Phanariots  of  Constantinople."  Greek 
life  remained  at  its  best  in  the  rural  districts,  where 
the  old  village  governments  were  allowed  to  subsist, 
and  where  accordingly  the  people  kept  apart  from  the 
corrupt  and  oppressive  Turkish  law  courts. 

The  Church  in  particular  exhibited  in  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries,  in  a  worse  degree,  all  the 
corruption  and  backwardness  of  that  of  the  west 
in  the  pre-Reformation  period.  Greek  monasteries, 
despite  attempts  at  reform  by  single  emperors,  had 
long  been  in  large  measure  places  of  comfortable 
retreat  for  members  of  the  upper  classes ;  and  under 
Turkish  rule  they  became  still  more  so,  acting  how- 
ever as  centres  of  political  intrigue  in  addition.  The 
result  was  that,  with  every  facility  for  such  study  as 
the  Benedictines  carried  on  in  the  west,  the  Greek 
monks  as  a  rule  left  learning  alone,  and  were  active 
chiefly  as  Turkish  political  agents,  in  the  manner  of 
the  western  Jesuits.  The  secular  clergy  at  the  same 
time  became  so  depressed  economically  that  they  were 
commonly  obliged  to  work  with  their  hands  for  a 
living ;  and  though  those  of  the  country  districts  were 
as  a  rule  morally  much  superior  to  those  of  the  towns, 
all  alike  were  necessarily  very  ignorant.  In  the 
towns,  where  many  of  the  aristocracy  had  become 
Moslems  at  the  conquest,  both  clergy  and  monks 


GKEEK  CHRISTIANITY.  370 

frequently  apostatised  to  Islam,  three  cases  being 
recorded  in  the  year  1675 ;  and  about  that  time 
there  is  a  curious  record  of  the  Turks  putting  a  Chris- 
tian renegade  to  death  for  cursing  his  own  religion 
in  the  divan. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  Greek  Christianity  never 
had  the  slightest  countervailing  success  in  converting 
Moslems.  In  addition  to  the  spectacle  of  Christian 
degradation  constantly  under  their  eyes,  the  Turks 
were  in  a  position  to  say  that  no  trust  could  ever  be 
put  in  the  good  faith  of  a  Christian  State  which  made 
a  treaty  with  them.  Thus  even  when  the  usual 
diseases  of  despotism  and  dogmatism  corroded  the 
Turkish  polity,  the  Christians  counted  for  nothing  as 
an  element  either  of  regeneration  or  of  criticism ;  and 
no  Turk  ever  looked  to  their  creed  as  a  possible  force 
of  reform,  though  in  the  period  of  energy  the  ablest 
Turkish  statesman  always  saw  the  wisdom  of  ruling 
them  tolerantly,  in  the  Turkish  interest,  and  sought 
to  win  them  to  Islam.  Outside  of  Greece  proper, 
accordingly,  the  Greek  Church  never  regained  any 
ground  in  the  Turkish  empire ;  and  in  the  age  of  the 
conquest,  when  the  expulsion  of  Jews  from  Spain 
drove  many  of  that  race  to  Turkey,  they  were  every- 
where preferred  to  Christians,  whom  they  ousted, 
further,  from  many  industrial  and  commercial  posi- 
tions in  the  towns,  becoming  the  chief  bankers, 
physicians,  and  merchants,  and  so  helping  to  depress 
the  Christians. 

No  race  could  under  such  conditions  maintain  a 
high  intellectual  life  ;  and  among  Greek  Christians 
orthodoxy  was  a  matter  of  course.  While  Venice  held 
the  Morea  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
while  Genoa  ruled  some  of  the  islands,  the  same  state 


380  MODEEN  CHKISTIANITY. 

of  things  prevailed  under  Catholic  rule.  When 
accordingly  the  sense  of  nationality  began  to  grow  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  it  was  from  the  first  associated 
with  the  national  religion.  In  the  first  quarter  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  Catholic  propaganda  was  carried 
on  in  Chios  and  elsewhere  under  French  auspices,  and 
the  Greek  Church  persuaded  the  Turkish  Government 
to  prohibit  proselytism.  At  no  period  does  the  strife 
between  easterns  and  westerns  at  the  Holy  Sepulchre 
seem  to  have  ceased ;  and  it  now  began  to  worsen. 
The  wars  between  Austria  and  Turkey,  however, 
began  the  gradual  emancipation  of  the  Greek  people 
from  servitude,  by  putting  an  outside  pressure  on  the 
Turkish  Government  ;  the  Russians  continued  the 
process ;  and  the  new  friendly  relations  now  set  up 
between  Greek  and  other  Christians  developed  a  new 
Greek  sentiment  of  racial  hostility  to  the  Turks.  At 
the  same  time,  the  hostility  of  the  Christian  powers 
made  the  Porte  inclined  to  attach  the  Greek  upper 
class  by  giving  them  privileges  as  Turkish  officials, 
and  thus  the  national  self-respect  was  on  that  side 
further  encouraged,  despite  the  corruption  of  the 
favoured  class.  Probably  Russian  influence  in  the 
eighteenth  century  did  most  to  arouse  national  aspira- 
tions, Russia  being  specially  welcome  as  holding  the 
Greek  form  of  Christianity  ;  but  the  Russian  attempt 
to  secure  sovereignty  as  the  price  of  military  help 
checked  the  movement  for  independence  ;  and  it 
needed  the  contagion  of  the  French  revolutionary 
movement  to  cause  a  vigorous  revival.  Then  Russia 
on  political  grounds  combined  with  the  Porte  to  resist 
French  influence  from  the  Levant  and  the  Ionian 
islands ;  and  when  in  1815  the  revived  Ionian 
Republic  was  placed  under  British  protection,  Russia 


GREEK  CHRISTIANITY.  381 

and   Turkey  continued    to   combine   in    jealousy   of 
western  influence. 

English  rule  in  the  Ionian  Islands  in  turn  was 
"neither  wise  nor  liberal,"  and  while  it  subsisted  did 
nothing  for  Greek  development ;  but  it  remains  the 
fact  that  Russia,  holding  the  Greek  creed,  never  aimed 
sympathetically  at  Greek  liberation.  That  came  about 
at  length  through  the  fervour  of  national  feeling  set 
up  at  the  French  Revolution,  and  encouraged  by  a 
common  European  sympathy,  grounded  not  on  religion 
but  on  admiration  for  ancient  and  pagan  Greece  as 
the  great  exemplar  of  civilisation  and  intellectual  life. 
The  same  admiration  for  their  ancestors  was  naturally 
aroused  among  the  Greeks  themselves,  and  was  their 
strongest  political  impulse.  "  Ecclesiastical  ties  greatly 
facilitated  union,  but  they  neither  created  the  impulse 
towards  independence,  nor  infused  the  enthusiasm 
which  secured  success." 

Since  the  achievement  of  Greek  independence, 
however,  the  people  have  remained  substantially 
orthodox.  Though  they  are  no  longer  withheld  from 
intercourse  with  the  west,  but  have  on  the  contrary 
shown  a  large  measure  of  cosmopolitanism,  their 
intellectual  life  remains  relatively  fixed,  and  the  new 
complacency  of  independence  backs  the  old  com- 
placency of  orthodoxy.  An  excessive  devotion  to 
politics  and  political  intrigue  continues  to  absorb  the 
mental  activity  of  the  people  ;  and  literary  veneration 
for  the  classic  past  hampers  the  free  play  of  intel- 
ligence on  higher  problems.  The  recent  "  Gospel 
Riots "  at  Athens  exhibit  the  state  of  real  culture. 
Some  years  ago,  on  the  urging  of  the  Queen,  there 
was  made  a  translation  of  the  New  Testament  into 
the  living  language  of  the  people,  or  into  one  midway 


382  MODEKN  CHRISTIANITY. 

between  that  and  the  artificial  academic  tongue  which 
has  been  developed  among  the  literary  class.  Eecently, 
however,  what  appears  to  be  a  more  truly  vernacular 
version  began  to  be  published  in  an  Athenian  journal ; 
and  it  was  against  this  that  the  students  and  others 
concerned  directed  their  indignation,  bringing  about 
by  their  disturbances  an  actual  change  of  ministry. 
Orthodox  sentiment  and  orthodox  ignorance  appear  to 
be  the  moving  forces  ;  so  that  at  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  century  Greece  can  claim  to  be  the  most 
bigoted  of  Christian  countries.  Doubtless  the  con- 
sciousness of  possessing  the  continuous  apostolic 
tradition  is  an  important  psychological  factor  in  the 
special  conservatism  of  belief,  as  is  literary  past- 
worship  in  the  conservatism  of  speech. 

When  we  turn  to  Russia,  where  the  creed  of  the  Greek 
Church,  though  under  an  independent  Patriarch,  is 
that  of  the  State,  we  find  the  usual  phenomena  of 
European  intellectual  life  specially  marked.  In  no 
other  country,  perhaps,  is  rationalism  or  indifference 
more  nearly  universal  among  the  educated  class  ;  and 
nowhere  is  faith  more  uncritical  among  the  mass. 
Among  them  the  use  and  adoration  of  icons — pictures 
of  Jesus  or  the  Madonna  or  of  the  saints,  embellished 
in  various  ways — is  universal  in  both  private  and 
public  devotion ;  and  a  certain  number  of  images, 
credited  with  miraculous  virtue,  earn  great  revenues 
for  the  monasteries  or  churches  which  possess  them. 
The  mass  of  the  parish  clergy  (who  like  those  of  Greece 
may  marry  before  ordination,  but  not  a  second  time) 
are  so  ignorant  as  to  be  unconcerned  about  educated 
unbelief ;  and  the  Church  as  a  whole  has  little  or  no  poli- 
tical influence,  being  thoroughly  subject  to  the  political 
administration,  or  at  least  to  the  authority  of  the  Tsar. 


GREEK  CHRISTIANITY.  383 

In  the  medieval  period,  monasteries  in  Russia 
underwent  the  same  evolution  as  elsewhere,  the 
monks  passing  from  poverty  to  corporate  wealth, 
and  owning  in  particular  multitudes  of  serfs.  Their 
lands  and  serfs,  however,  were  secularised  in  the 
eighteenth  century  ;  and  since  then,  though  some 
five  hundred  monasteries  continue  to  exist,  they 
have  counted  for  little  in  the  national  life.  Eccle- 
siastical discipline  has  in  general  been  always  rigor- 
ous under  the  autocracy ;  and  in  the  eighteenth 
century  it  was  common  to  flog  priests  cruelly  for 
almost  any  breach  of  discipline.  And  though  Russia 
has  for  ages  abounded  in  dissenting  sects,  at  no  time 
has  any  movement  of  reform  come  from  the  clergy. 
No  church  has  been  more  steadily  unintellectual.  All 
progress  in  Russia  has  come  from  the  stimulus  of 
western  culture,  beginning  under  Peter  the  Great,  and 
continuing  throughout  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries ;  and  though  some  men  of  genius,  as  the 
great  novelist,  Dostoyevsky,  who  was  anti-rationalist, 
and  Count  Tolstoy,  who  is  heretically  religious,  have 
been  exceptions  to  the  rule,  the  higher  Russian  culture 
is  predominantly  rationalistic. 

The  numerous  dissident  sects  of  Russia,  which 
represent  in  general  unorganised  developments  of 
the  spirit  of  Bible-worshipping  Protestantism,  have 
been  broadly  classed  as  follows  : — 1.  Sects  such  as  the 
Molokani  and  Stundists,  which  found  on  the  Scrip- 
tures, but  are  not  literalists,  and  resort  at  times  to 
inward  light  for  interpretation.  2.  Sects  which  dis- 
regard Scripture,  and  follow  the  doctrine  of  special 
leaders.  3.  Sects  which  believe  in  the  re-incarnation 
of  Christ.  4.  Sects  given  to  the  religion  of  physical 
excitement ;  some  being  erotic,  as  the  Jumpers ;  some 


384  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

flagellant,  as  the  Khlysti ;  some  fanatically  ascetic,  as 
the  Skoptsi  or  Eunuchs.  All  alike,  however  near 
they  may  be  to  orthodoxy,  are  liable  to  official  per- 
secution equally  with  the  members  of  the  recent  sect 
of  Dukhobortsi,  associated  with  Count  Tolstoy,  whose 
doctrine  is  non-resistance  and  refusal  to  bear  arms. 
Thus  Christianity  in  Russia  is  variously  identified 
with  the  most  medieval  formalism  and  bigotry  and 
the  most  exalted  enthusiasm  for  concord;  while  the 
march  of  intelligence  proceeds  as  far  as  it  may  in 
disregard  of  all  supernaturalist  creeds.  But  the  vast 
mass  of  the  Russian  peasantry  stands  for  the  faith  -of 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  may  now  be  said  to  constitute 
the  most  religious  section  of  total  Christendom. 

Between  eastern  and  western  Christianity,  finally, 
there  seems  no  prospect  of  fraternisation,  though 
hopes  of  that  kind  have  been  sometimes  floated  in 
the  Anglican  Church.  At  the  church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre  the  Greeks  and  the  Latins  are  in  chronic 
strife ;  it  was  one  of  their  squabbles  that  brought 
about  the  Crimean  War ;  and  in  the  present  year 
they  have  shed  blood  in  one  of  their  scuffles.  The 
visitor  to  Jerusalem  thus  witnesses  the  standing 
spectacle  of  an  impassive  Turkish  soldier  keeping 
the  peace  between  mobs  of  Christian  devotees,  eager 
to  fly  at  each  other's  throats. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE    RELATION    TO    PROGRESS. 

§  1.  Moral  Influence. 

IT  is  a  deeply  significant  fact  that  in  recent  times  the 
defence  of  Christianity  takes  much  more  often  the 
form  of  a  claim  that  it  is  socially  useful  than  that  of 
an  attempt  to  prove  it  true.  The  argument  from 
utility  is  indeed  an  old  one :  it  is  an  error  to  say,  as 
did  J.  S.  Mill,  that  men  have  been  little  concerned  to 
urge  it  in  comparison  with  the  argument  from  truth ; 
but  the  former  is  now  in  special  favour.  Insofar  as  it 
proceeds  upon  a  survey  of  Christian  history  it  may 
here  be  left  to  the  test  of  confrontation  with  the  facts  ; 
but  as  it  is  constantly  urged  with  regard  to  the  actual 
state  of  life  and  faith,  it  is  necessary  to  consider  it  in 
conclusion. 

The  chief  difficulty  in  such  an  inquiry  is  that  the 
most  irreconcilable  formulas  are  put  forth  on  the  side 
and  in  the  name  of  belief.  Commonly  it  is  claimed 
that  all  that  is  good  in  current  morality  is  derived 
from  Christian  sources ;  that  morally  scrupulous  un- 
believers are  so  because  of  their  religious  training  or 
environment ;  and  that  a  removal  of  the  scaffolding  of 
creed  will  bring  to  ruin  the  edifice  of  conduct  that  is 
held  to  have  been  reared  by  its  means.  It  is  not 
usually  realised  that  such  an  argument  ends  in 
crediting  to  paganism  and  Judaism  the  alleged  moral 

385  cc 


386  MODEEN  CHRISTIANITY. 

merits  of  the  first  Christians.  It  might  indeed  be 
suggested,  as  against  the  traditional  account  of  their 
pre-eminent  goodness,  that  either  they,  in  turn,  owed 
their  character  to  their  antecedents,  or  their  creed  lost 
its  efficacy  after  the  first  generation.  But  the 
historic  answer  to  the  claim  is  that  there  has  never 
been  any  such  moralising  virtue  in  the  Christian  or 
any  other  creed  in  historically  familiar  times  as  need 
alarm  any  one  for  the  moral  consequences  of  its 
gradual  disappearance.  All  sudden  and  revolutionary 
changes  in  popular  moral  standards  certainly  appear 
to  be  harmful ;  but  the  great  majority  of  such  changes 
in  the  Christian  era  have  been  worked  under  the 
auspices  of  faith,  having  consisted  not  in  the  abandon- 
ment of  belief,  but  in  the  restatement  of  ethics  in 
terms  of  "  inspiration."  Unbelief  proceeds  with  no 
such  cataclysmic  speed.  It  is  not  conceivable  that  the 
gradual  dissolution  of  supernaturalist  notions  will 
ever  of  itself  work  such  evil  as  is  told  of  in  the  story 
of  the  military  evangel  of  Christianity  in  the  Dark 
Ages,  the  Crusades,  the  Albigensian  massacres,  the 
conquests  of  Mexico  and  Peru,  the  Anabaptist  move- 
ment at  the  outset  of  the  Beformation,  or  the  massacre 
of  St.  Bartholomew,  to  say  nothing  of  the  death-roll 
of  the  Inquisition  and  the  mania  against  witchcraft. 
Even  the  bloodshed  of  the  Beign  of  Terror  in  the 
French  Be  volution,  wrought  under  peculiar  political 
perturbation,  was  under  the  auspices  not  of  atheists 
but  of  theists. 

If  it  be  asked  wherein  lies  the  specific  value  of 
dogma  as  a  moral  restraint,  in  terms  of  actual  obser- 
vation, there  are  to  be  found  no  facts  that  can  induce 
a  scientific  inquirer  to  struggle  for  the  maintenance  of 
a  creed  believed  to  be  untrue  in  the  hope  that  it  will 


MORAL  INFLUENCE.  387 

prove  morally  useful.  Moral  evils  may  for  the  pur- 
poses of  such  an  inquiry  be  broadly  classed  under  the 
heads  of  vice,  crime,  poverty,  and  war ;  and  only  in 
regard  to  the  first  is  there  even  a  plausible  pretence 
that  supernaturalist  belief  is  a  preventive.  It  might 
indeed  seem  likely,  on  first  thought,  that  a  cancelling 
of  supernaturalist  vetoes  on  the  pleasures  of  the  senses 
may  lead  to  increased  indulgence;  but  those  vetoes 
apply  to  all  sensual  indulgence  alike,  and  no  one  now 
pretends  that  unbelievers  are  more  given  to  gluttony 
and  drunkenness  than  believers  ;  though  the  latter 
may  doubtless  claim,  in  respect  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
to  include  a  larger  number  of  extreme  ascetics,  as  do 
the  votaries  of  faiths  pronounced  by  Catholics  to  be 
false.  While,  then,  there  may  and  do  arise  modifica- 
tions of  the  religious  formulas  of  ethics,  there  is  abso- 
lutely no  reason  to  apprehend  that  any  form  of  con- 
duct will  be  less  considerate  on  naturalist  than  on 
supernaturalist  principles.  The  Christian  doctrine 
of  forgiveness  for  sins  must  do  more  to  encourage 
licence  than  can  be  done  by  any  rationalistic  ethic. 
Even  where  naturalism  might  give  a  sanction  which 
Christian  dogma  withholds,  as  in  the  case  of  sui- 
cides, it  is  not  found  that  any  statistical  change 
is  set  up  by  unbelief.  Poverty,  again,  has  probably 
been  normally  worse  in  Christian  Europe  through- 
out the  whole  Christian  era  than  in  any  previous  or 
non-Christian  civilisation  ;  and  the  most  systematic 
schemes  for  its  extinction  in  recent  times  are  of 
non-Christian  origin,  though  a  personal  and  habitual 
effort  to  modify  the  stress  of  poverty  is  one  of  the 
more  creditable  features  of  organised  Christian 
work.  As  regards  crime,  the  case  is  much  the  same. 
The  vast  majority  of  criminals  hold  supernaturalist 


388  MODEEN  CHRISTIANITY. 

beliefs,  atheism  being  extremely  rare  among  them ; 
and  while  many  Christians  have  in  the  past  done  good 
and  zealous  work  towards  a  humane  and  rational 
treatment  of  criminals,  the  only  scientific  and  com- 
prehensive schemes  now  on  foot  are  framed  on  natu- 
ralist lines,  and  are  denounced  by  professed  Christians 
on  theological  lines,  as  being  sinfully  lenient  to  wrong- 
doing. Thus  supernaturalism  remains  prone  to  a  cruel 
and  irrational  ideal  of  retribution. 

It  is  in  regard  to  the  influence  of  religious  teaching 
on  international  relations,  however,  that  the  saddest 
conclusions  are  forced  upon  the  student  of  Christian 
history.  The  foregoing  pages  have  shown  how  potent 
has  been  organised  Christianity  to  promote  strife  and 
slaughter,  how  impotent  to  restrain  them.  If  any 
instance  could  be  found  in  history  of  a  definite  pre- 
vention of  war  on  grounds  of  Christian  as  distinguished 
from  prudential  motive,  it  would  have  been  there 
recorded.  So  flagrant  is  the  record  that  when  it  is 
cited  the  Christian  defence  veers  round  from  the 
position  above  viewed  to  one  which  unconsciously 
places  the  source  of  civilisation  in  human  reason. 
Yet  even  thus  the  historic  facts  are  misstated. 
The  enormity  of  Christian  strifes  in  the  past  is 
now  apologetically  accounted  for  by  the  fantastic 
theorem  that  hitherto  men  have  not  "  understood  " 
Christianity,  and  that  only  in  modern  times  have 
its  founder's  teachings  been  properly  comprehended. 
Obviously  there  has  been  no  such  development :  the 
gospel's  inculcations  of  love  and  concord  are  as  simple 
as  may  be,  and  have  at  all  times  been  perfectly  intel- 
ligible :  what  has  been  lacking  is  the  habit  of  mind 
and  will  that  secures  the  fulfilment  of  such  precepts. 
And  recent  experience  has  painfully  proved,  once  for 


MORAL  INFLUENCE.  389 

all,  that  the  religious  or  "believer's"  temper,  instead 
of  being  normally  conducive  to  such  action,  is  normally 
the  worst  hindrance  to  it. 

An  explanation  is  to  be  found  in  a  study  of  the 
normal  results  of  guiding  conduct  by  emotional 
leanings  rather  than  by  critical  reflection.  The 
former  is  peculiarly  the  process  of  evangelical  religion. 
Hence  comes  the  practical  inefficacy  of  a  love  of  peace 
derived  either  inertly  through  acceptance  of  a  form  of 
words  declared  to  be  sacred,  or  through  an  emotional 
assent  to  such  words  emotionally  propounded.  Emo- 
tions so  evolved  are  of  the  surface,  and  are  erased  as 
easily  as  they  are  induced,  by  stronger  emotions  pro- 
ceeding from  the  animal  nature.  Only  a  small 
minority  of  Christians,  accordingly,  are  found  to 
resist  the  rush  of  warlike  passions ;  and  some  who 
call  most  excitedly  for  peace  when  there  is  no  war 
are  found  among  those  most  excited  by  the  war 
passion  as  soon  as  the  contagion  stirs.  It  may  be 
noted  as  a  decisive  fact  in  religious  history  that  in 
regard  to  the  war  which  rages  while  these  pages  are 
being  written,  the  movement  of  critical  opposition 
and  expostulation  succeeds  almost  in  the  ratio  of  men's 
remoteness  from  the  Christian  faith.  Among  the 
Quaker  sect,  so  long  honorably  distinguished  by  its 
testimony  against  war,  there  has  been  a  considerable 
reversion  to  the  normal  temper,  as  if  the  old  con- 
viction had  been  in  many  cases  lost  in  the  process  of 
merely  hereditary  transmission.  Among  the  Christian 
Churches  so  called,  by  far  the  most  peace-loving  is 
the  Unitarian,  which  rejects  the  central  Christian 
dogma.  And  among  the  public  men  associated  with 
the  protest  against  the  war,  the  number  known  to  be 
rationalists  is  proportionally  as  large  as  that  of  the 


390  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

supernaturalists  is  small.  The  personal  excellence 
and  elevation  of  moral  feeling  shown  among  the 
latter  group  is  thus  no  warrant  for  seeing  the  cause 
in  their  creed.  In  such  matters  there  is  no  invariable 
rule,  every  section  exhibiting  psychical  divergence 
within  itself ;  but  it  is  now  statistically  clear  that  the 
standing  claim  for  the  conventional  creed  as  being 
peculiarly  helpful  to  the  cause  of  peace  is  false. 

Such  tests  are  of  course  not  those  that  will  be  first 
put  by  a  scrupulous  mind  seeking  to  know  whether 
the  Christian  creed  be  true.  Rather  they  are  forced 
on  such  a  mind  by  the  tactics  of  believers  who  as  a 
rule  seek  to  evade  the  fundamental  issue.  It  is  not 
unlikely,  therefore,  in  view  of  present  painful  experi- 
ence, that  for  some  time  to  come  the  stress  of  defence 
will  shift  to  the  attempt,  never  entirely  abandoned,  to 
defend  the  faith  on  evidential  or  philosophic  grounds. 
We  have  thus  to  consider  finally  the  apparent  effects 
of  Christian  credences  and  institutions  on  the  intel- 
lectual life  of  the  time. 


§  2.  Intellectual  Influence. 

So  far  as  it  can  be  historically  traced,  the  intel- 
lectual influence  of  Christianity  was  relatively  at  its 
best  when  it  began  to  be  propounded  as  a  creed  in 
critical  relation  to  Judaism.  Intellectual  gain  was 
checked  as  soon  as  it  became  a  substantive  creed, 
demanding  submissive  acceptance.  From  that  point 
forward,  it  becomes  a  restraint  on  intellectual  free- 
dom, save  in  so  far  as  it  stirred  believers  to  a  one- 
sided criticism  of  pagan  beliefs,  a  process  of  which 
the  educational  effect  was  promptly  annulled  by  a 


INTELLECTUAL  INFLUENCE.  391 

veto  on  its  extension  to  the  beliefs  of  the  critics.  It 
has  been  argued  indeed  that  modern  science  has  been 
signally  advanced  by  the  mental  bias  that  goes  with 
monotheism  ;  but  the  historical  fact  is  that  Jewish 
monotheism  was  much  less  friendly  to  science  than 
Babylonian  polytheism  ;  that  the  beginnings  of  Greek 
science  were  among  polytheists  and,  perhaps,  atheists  ; 
that  Saracen  monotheism  owed  its  scientific  stimulus 
to  the  recovered  thought  of  polytheistic  Greece ;  and 
that,  whatever  impulse  a  truly  monotheistic  phi- 
losophy may  have  given  to  modern  science,  the  usual 
influence  of  Christian  belief  has  been  to  override  the 
idea  of  invariable  causation  in  nature.  Even  after 
the  belief  in  recurrent  miracles  is  disavowed,  the 
doctrine  and  practice  of  prayer  remain  to  represent 
the  old  concept. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  kind  of  violence  done  to 
the  instinct  for  concrete  or  historical  truth  by  the 
frauds  and  delusions  of  the  early  and  medieval 
Church,  though  greatly  attenuated  in  modern  times, 
has  never  ended.  Critical  judgment  has  only  slowly 
recovered  the  strength  and  stature  it  had  in  the  pre- 
Christian  world  ;  and  wherever  faith  has  plenary  rule 
such  judgment  is  liable  to  arbitrary  interdict.  It  is 
true  that  even  in  the  nineteenth  century  some  great 
servants  of  science  have  been  either  orthodox  Chris- 
tians or  devout  theists.  Faraday  and  Joule,  Pasteur 
and  Kelvin,  are  cases  in  point.  But  instead  of  the 
religious  creed  having  in  such  cases  furnished  the  cue 
or  the  motive  to  the  scientific  work  done,  it  is  found  to 
be  out  of  all  logical  relation  to  it,  and  to  be  a  mere 
obstruction  to  the  scientific  use  of  the  reason  on  the 
religious  problem  itself. 

To  a  considerable  extent,  the  rigid   adherence  to 


392  MODEKN  CHRISTIANITY. 

religious  beliefs  or  professions  in  defiance  of  evidence 
is  on  all  fours  with  any  other  form  of  conservatism,  as 
the  social  and  the  political.  Inasmuch,  however,  as 
religion  proffers  both  a  specific  comfort  in  this  life 
and  a  specific  reward  in  another,  it  has  a  power  of 
intellectual  fixation  with  which  no  other  can  compare ; 
and  there  is  something  unique  in  the  spectacle  of 
religious  doctrines  kept  in  an  unchanged  form  by 
means  of  an  economic  basis  consecrated  to  them.  It 
has  been  seen  in  the  foregoing  history  that  for  two 
thousand  years  no  creed  with  such  a  basis  has  been 
overthrown  either  wholly  or  locally  save  by  a  force 
which  confiscated  its  endowments  or  suppressed  its 
worship.  Thus,  and  thus  only,  did  Christianity 
triumph  over  southern  and  northern  paganism ;  thus 
did  Islam  triumph  over  Christianity  in  parts  of  its 
world,  and  fall  again  before  it  in  others ;  and  thus 
did  Protestantism  expel  Catholicism  from  many 
countries  and  suffer  expulsion  in  turn  from  some  of 
them.  Where  endowments  can  subsist,  with  freedom 
of  worship,  no  form  of  doctrine  that  is  wedded  to  the 
endowments  ever  yields  directly  to  criticism. 

Christianity  has  thus  had  in  the  modern  world  a 
more  sinister  influence  on  the  intellectual  life  than 
was  wrought  by  any  phase  of  paganism  even  in 
periods  when  the  intelligence  of  the  ancient  world 
was  divorced  from  its  established  religion.  The 
divorce  is  now  more  complete  than  ever  before ;  but 
the  bribe  to  conformity  is  greater  than  ever,  relatively 
at  least  to  the  light  of  the  time.  The  result  is  a 
maximum  of  insincerity,  whether  or  not  the  bribe 
is  given  by  a  standing  endowment.  Dissenting 
or  voluntary  churches  in  the  Protestant  countries 
offer  an  income  to  more  or  less  educated  men  on 


INTELLECTUAL  INFLUENCE.  393 

condition  of  propounding  the  creed  of  the  past ;  and 
the  more  intelligent  minority  within  the  churches  are 
weighed  down  in  every  effort  at  a  modification  of 
doctrine  by  the  orthodoxy  of  the  uncritical  or  fanatical 
many,  who  control  the  endowments.  Social  and  com- 
mercial life  conform  to  the  conditions,  and  every- 
where the  profession  of  belief  is  far  in  excess  of 
the  actuality — a  state  of  things  unfavourable  to  all 
morality. 

It  is  not  only  in  religion  and  ethics  that  the 
influence  of  endowed  and  organised  Christianity  is 
thus  intellectually  baneful.  Every  science  in  turn, 
from  the  days  of  Galileo,  has  had  to  fight  for  its  life 
against  the  sanctified  ignorance  of  all  the  churches ; 
and  while  the  physical  sciences,  which  can  be  taught 
without  open  reference  to  traditional  error,  have 
carried  their  point  and  received  endowment  in  turn, 
happily  without  being  tied  down  to  any  documents, 
the  moral  sciences  are  either  kept  in  tutelage  to 
theology  in  the  universities  of  many  countries,  our 
own  included,  or  forced  to  leave  out  of  their  scope  the 
phenomena  of  religion  itself,  and  in  particular  the 
sociological  problem  of  Christian  history.  There  is 
to  this  day  not  a  single  chair  of  sociology  in  a  British 
university;  and  even  in  the  United  States,  where 
such  chairs  are  common,  they  and  the  historical  chairs 
alike  are  barred  from  any  free  treatment  of  religious 
evolution.  Ethical  teaching  is  similarly  limited  ;  and 
a  science  which  on  that  side  threatened  to  turn  the 
flank  of  religious  doctrine — to  wit,  phrenology — was 
at  an  early  stage  of  its  progress  in  the  first  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century  successfully  ostracised,  so  that, 
lacking  the  expert  handling  without  which  no  science 
can  be  kept  sound,  it  has  been  relegated  even  for 


394  MODEKN  CHRISTIANITY. 

most  naturalists  to  the  limbo  of  exploded  error, 
without  ever  having  been  scientifically  confuted. 

In  fine,  the  science  of  society,  the  most  momentous 
of  all,  is  by  reason  of  the  very  nature  of  organised 
religion  kept  in  trammels,  lest  it  should  undermine 
the  reign  of  faith.  It  makes  its  way  in  virtue  of  the 
whole  scientific  movement  of  the  age,  and  is  perhaps 
most  progressive  in  the  countries  where,  as  in  France 
and  Italy,  an  official  Catholicism  has  prevented  the 
academic  compromise  between  faith  and  science  which 
is  effected  in  the  Protestant  world,  but  is  powerless  to 
keep  independent  science  out  of  the  universities.  In 
those  countries,  however,  there  are  compromises  of 
other  kinds ;  and  in  France  there  has  recently  been 
seen,  in  the  case  of  Captain  Dreyfus,  the  spectacle 
of  the  clerical  influence  combining  with  that  of  the 
army  to  enforce  an  insensate  act  of  injustice,  less 
from  any  intelligent  motive  of  a  direct  bearing  than 
for  the  sake  of  a  general  alliance  in  which  each  of  the 
two  great  conservative  and  anti-progressive  institu- 
tions backs  the  other  for  general  reactionary  ends. 
Thus  religious  feeling  abets  social  and  political  malice ; 
and  such  movements  as  that  of  anti-Semitism,  fostered 
by  Christian  organisations,  can  secure  support  from 
others  as  the  price  of  clerical  support. 

As  a  result  of  its  autocratic  and  centralised  system, 
further,  Catholicism  is  a  special  force  of  political  con- 
servatism in  Catholic  countries,  with  the  single  excep- 
tion of  Ireland,  where  its  dependence  on  the  mass 
of  the  people  keeps  it  in  close  alliance  with  their 
nationalist  movement  in  despite  of  any  papal  restric- 
tions. Such  an  alliance  is  of  course  unfavourable  to 
intellectual  progress  on  other  lines  ;  and  English  Pro- 
testant policy,  largely  directed  by  sectarian  feeling, 


INTELLECTUAL  INFLUENCE.          395 

thus  preserves  in  Ireland  the  type  of  Catholicism  it 
fears.  Such  Catholicism  retards  popular  education 
wherever  it  can ;  and  the  one  general  advantage  the 
Protestant  countries  can  claim  over  the  Catholic  is 
their  lower  degree  of  illiteracy.  On  the  other  hand 
the  rationalism  of  the  more  enlightened  Catholic 
countries,  where  the  Church  lacks  official  power,  is  as 
a  rule  more  explicit,  more  awake  to  the  nature  of  the 
force  opposed  to  it ;  while  in  Protestant  Germany 
it  is  little  concerned  to  oppose  a  church  with  small 
organised  or  academic  influence,  and  attempts  singu- 
larly little  popular  criticism  of  faith.  Every  country 
thus  presents  some  special  type  of  intellectual  harm 
or  dissimulation  resulting  from  the  presence  of 
organised  Christianity  ;  and  in  all  alike  it  makes  in 
varying  degrees  an  obstacle  to  light. 

In  the  highest  degree  does  this  seem  to  be  true  of 
the  land  where  it  has  had  the  longest  continuous  life. 
Alone  among  the  nations  Greece  contributes  nothing 
to  the  world's  renovation.  Italy,  despite  the  papacy, 
has  a  swarm  of  eager  and  questioning  thinkers, 
working  at  the  human  sciences ;  Spain  stirs  under 
all  the  leaden  folds  of  clericalism  ;  but  Greece,  where 
the  faith  has  never  undergone  eclipse  since  Justinian's 
day,  remains  intellectually  Byzantine,  vainly  divided 
between  Christian  dogma  and  an  external  classic 
tradition,  neither  ancient  nor  modern.  Yet  this 
is  the  one  European  country  where  belief  is  osten- 
sibly untroubled  by  its  enemy.  It  is  hard  to  say 
how  far  the  surface  of  orthodoxy  conforms  to  the 
mental  life  underneath  ;  but  there  is  no  escape  from 
the  conclusion  that  a  new  mental  life  can  return  to 
the  land  of  Aristotle  only  in  the  measure  in  which 
it  readmits  from  the  west  the  spirit  of  search  and 


396  MODEBN  CHRISTIANITY. 

challenge  which  he  and  Socrates  left  to  re-inspire  a 
world  growing  moribund  under  the  spell  of  faith. 


§  3.  Conclusion  and  Prognosis. 

It  follows  from  the  foregoing  history  and  survey 
that  Christianity,  regarded  by  its  adherents  as  either 
the  one  progressive  and  civilising  religion  or  the  one 
most  helpful  to  progress  and  civilisation,  is  in  no  way 
vitally  different  from  the  others  which  have  a  theistic 
basis,  and  is  in  itself  neither  more  nor  less  a  force  of 
amelioration  than  any  other  founding  on  sacred  books 
and  supernaturalist  dogmas.  Enlightened  Christians 
with  progressive  instincts  have  justified  them  in  terms 
of  Christian  doctrine,  even  as  enlightened  Moslems, 
Brahmans,  and  Buddhists  have  justified  their  higher 
ideals  in  terms  of  their  doctrine ;  and  the  special 
fortune  of  Christianity  has  lain  in  this,  that  after 
nearly  a  thousand  years  in  which  it  was  relatively 
retrograde  as  compared  with  Islam,  which  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  time  was  progressive,  both  being  what  they 
were  in  virtue  of  institutions  and  environment,  the 
environment  was  so  far  politically  changed  that  the 
Christian  countries  gradually  progressed,  while  the 
Moslem  countries  lost  ground.  To-day  it  is  becoming 
clear  to  instructed  eyes  that  the  faiths  were  not  the 
causal  forces ;  and  in  Asia  the  rapid  development  of 
Japan  in  the  nineteenth  century  has  vividly  demon- 
strated the  fallacy  of  the  Christian  view.  As  there 
was  great  progress  under  ancient  paganism,  under 
each  one  of  the  great  creeds  or  cults  of  Asia,  under 
Islam,  and  under  Christianity,  so  there  may  be  much 
greater  progress  in  the  absence  of  them  all,  in  virtue 


CONCLUSION  AND  PKOGNOSIS.  397 

of  a  wider  knowledge,  a  more  scientific  polity,  and  a 
more  diffused  culture. 

The  ultimate  problem  is  to  forecast  the  future.  A 
confident  faith  in  continual  progress  is  one  of  the 
commonest  states  of  mind  of  the  present,  the  con- 
sciously scientific  age ;  and  in  view  of  the  unmistak- 
able decadence  of  the  creeds  as  such,  it  is  natural  to 
rationalists  to  expect  an  early  reduction  of  Christianity 
to  the  status  now  held  by  "  folk-lore,"  a  species  of 
survival  dependent  on  ignorance  upon  the  one  hand 
and  antiquarian  curiosity  on  the  other.  But  while  this 
may  be  called  probable,  there  can  be  no  scientific  cer- 
tainty in  the  matter.  For  one  thing,  the  process 
must  for  economic  reasons  be  much  slower  than  used 
to  be  thought  likely,  for  instance,  in  the  time  of 
Voltaire,  who  allowed  a  century  for  the  extinction  of 
the  Christian  creed.  Voltaire  was  so  far  right  that  a 
century  has  seen  Christianity  abandoned,  after  a 
reaction,  by  the  best  intelligence  of  our  age,  as  it  was 
by  that  of  his.  But  there  may  be  more  reactions ;  and 
there  is  always  a  conceivable  possibility  of  a  total 
decadence,  such  as  overtook  the  civilisation  of  the 
old  Mediterranean  world. 

The  question  is  at  bottom  one  of  political  science. 
Greek  and  Koman  civilisation  failed  primarily  through 
the  incapacity  of  the  ancient  States  to  set  up  a  polity 
of  international  peace,  secondarily  through  the  effects 
of  the  military  despotism  which  that  failure  super- 
induced. As  the  problem  is  all  of  a  piece,  avoidance 
of  the  old  error  will  presumably  mean  avoidance  of 
the  old  doom.  A  similar  political  failure  in  the 
modern  world  would  in  all  likelihood  mean  the  same 
sequence  of  military  imperialism,  possibly  with  better 
economic  management,  but  with  the  same  phenomena 


398  MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

of  intellectual  decline  and  reversion  to  fanaticism  and 
superstition  among  populations  debarred  from  political 
activity  and  free  speech.  It  is  indeed  dimly  conceiv- 
able that,  as  one  man  of  genius  has  suggested  by 
way  of  fiction,  the  mere  warfare  of  capital  and  labour 
may  end  in  the  degradation  of  the  people,  and  the 
consequent  reduction  of  upper-class  life  to  the  plane 
of  mere  sensuous  gratification  and  "  practical"  science. 
In  either  event,  a  religion  now  seen  by  instructed 
men  to  be  incredible  may  be  preserved  by  a  com- 
munity neither  instructed  nor  religious. 

The  hope  of  the  cause  of  reason  then  lies  with  the 
political  ideals  and  movements  which  best  promise  to 
save  democracy  and  to  elevate  the  mass.  It  is  hope- 
fully significant  that,  as  we  have  seen,  the  most 
systematic  and  scientific  of  these  movements  are  pro- 
nouncedly rationalistic ;  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  their 
ultimate  success  depends  on  their  rationalism.  All 
past  movements  for  the  social  salvation  of  the  mass 
have  failed  for  lack  of  social  science ;  and  Christianity 
in  its  most  humane  and  sympathetic  forms  remains 
the  negation  of  such  science. 

It  is  essential  to  a  durable  advance,  however,  that  it 
should  be  pure  of  violence,  and  utterly  tolerant.  When 
popular  education  has  emptied  all  or  any  of  the 
churches,  as  it  has  already  gone  some  way  towards 
doing,  the  spontaneous  revenue  of  those  which  are 
voluntary  bodies  will  have  ceased ;  and  by  that  time 
the  majority  will  be  in  a  position  to  dispose  of  national 
funds  and  to  tax  accumulated  endowments  in  the  social 
interest.  Such  a  course  will  be  facile  to  a  society 
which  provides  work  for  all  and  sustains  all ;  and 
when  the  bribe  of  sectarian  endowment  is  thus  made 
void,  the  more  factitious  life  of  ancient  error  will  be 


CONCLUSION  AND  PROGNOSIS.  399 

at  an  end.  But  the  most  speculative  construction  of 
the  future  provides  for  the  widest  individual  and 
psychological  freedom ;  and  there  will  have  been  no 
true  triumph  of  reason  if  philosophic  and  historic 
error  have  not  a  free  field.  The  Utopia  of  rationalism 
will  be  reached  when  supernaturalism  in  the  present 
sense  of  the  term  shall  have  passed  away  as  the  belief 
in  witchcraft  has  done,  without  pressure  of  pains  and 
penalties.  And  that  Utopia  will  be  the  rendez- 
vous, belike,  of  more  than  one  social  ideal — of  all, 
indeed,  which  trust  to  reason  for  the  attainment  of 
righteousness. 


SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE, 


PART  I.— PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIANITY. 

CHAPTER  I.— THE  BEGINNINGS. 

§  1.  Documentary  Clues. 

OF  the  countless  works  discussing  early  Christian  literature  and  the 
formation  of  the  New  Testament  "Canon,"  the  following  may  be 
consulted  with  profit : — All  relevant  articles  in  the  new  Encyclopedia 
Biblica  (A.  &  C.  Black) ;  Supernatural  Religion  :  An  Inquiry  into  the 
Reality  of  Divine  Revelation,  6th  ed.  revised,  1875,  2  vols.;  3rd  vol. 
1877  ;  A  Reply  to  Dr.  Lightfoot's  Essays,  by  the  same  author,  1889 ; 
An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  the  New  Testament,  by  Dr.  Samuel 
Davidson,  2nd  ed.  revised,  1882,  2  vols.;  The  Apostolical  Fathers,  by 
Dr.  James  Donaldson,  1874  and  later;  Kenan's  preface  to  his  Saint 
Paul,  the  Appendice  to  his  L'Antechrist,  and  his  Les  Evangile* ;  Mr. 
E.  B.  Nicholson's  compilation,  The  Gospel  According  to  the  Hebreivs, 
1879  ;  History  of  the  Canon  in  the  Christian  Church,  by  Professor 
Beuss,  Eng.  tr.  1890;  Apostolical  Records  of  Early  Christianity,  by 
the  Bev.  Dr.  Giles,  1886 ;  Strauss's  second  Leben  Jesu,  tr.  in  Eng. 
(not  always  accurately)  as  A  New  Life  of  Jesus,  2nd  ed.  1879,  2  vols.; 
and  the  old  research  of  Lardner  on  The  Credibility  of  the  Gospels 
(Part  II.  ch.  i.  to  xxix.  in  vol.  ii.  of  Works,  ed.  1835)  which  covers  the 
ground  pretty  fully,  indeed  diffusely.  A  conspectus  of  the  early  sources 
is  given  (Gr.  and  Lat.)  in  Kirchhofer's  Quellensammlung  zur  Geschichte 
des  Neutestainentlichen  Canons,  1844  and  later;  but  the  most  compre- 
hensive work  of  the  kind  is  Harnack's  Geschiclite  der  altchristlichen 
Literatur  bis  Eusebius  (1893)  in  two  great  volumes  ;  and  the  still 
bulkier  Chronologic  which  follows  thereon.  Of  real  value  is  the  recent 
survey  of  Professor  Arnold  Meyer.  Die  moderne  Forschung  iibcr  die 
Geschichte  des  Urchristentums,  1898.  [The  writings  ascribed  to 
the  Apostolic  Fathers  are  translated  in  the  first  volume  of  the  "  Ante- 
Nicene  Library ";  those  ascribed  to  Justin  Martyr  in  the  second 
volume.] 

401  DD 


402  SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE. 

§  2.  The  Earliest  Christian  Sects. 

The  sources  as  to  the  Nazarenes  and  Ebionites  are  given  by  Bishop 
Lightfoot  in  his  ed.  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  p.  298,  ff.  (diss. 
reprinted  in  Dissertations  ou  the  Apostolic  Aye,  1892,  p.  74,  ff.)  ;  also 
in  W.  11.  Sorley's  Jewish  Christi<nis  and  Judaism,  1881,  p.  66,  ff. 
Both  proceed  on  the  traditional  assumptions.  -  Critical  discrimination 
between  the  Ebionites  and  "Nazarenes  "  begins  in  modern  times  with 
Mosheim,  Vindicia  Antiquce  Christianorum  D-isciplince  contra  Tolandi 
Nazarenum,  1720.  See  also  his  Comnientarium  de  rebus  Ckri$tuawnm 
ante  Constantinitm,  1753,  Saec.  II.  §  xxxix.  (Eng.  tr.  vol.  ii,  p.  194,  ff.). 
His  position  was  developed  by  Gieseler  (1828),  and  has  become  the 
basis  of  later  ecclesiastical  historiography,  as  in  the  above-cited  writers, 
and  in  Weizsacker's  Apostolic  Aye.  A  new  and  more  searching  analysis 
of  the  phenomena,  on  lines  previously  suggested  but  not  developed,  is 
made  by  P.  Hochart  in  his  Etudes  d'histoire  religieuse,  1890,  ch.  iv. 
and  v.  For  the  positions  of  the  present  section,  in  so  far  as  they 
are  not  there  fully  reasoned,  the  grounds  will  be  found  in  the  author's 
Christianity  and  Mythology,  1900,  Part  III.  1st  Div.  §  9,  and  in  the 
National  Reformer,  i888,  March  18th  and  25th,  April  1st,  8th,  and  15th. 

§  3.  Personality  of  the  Nominal  Founder. 

Of  the  more  rationalistic  Lives  of  Jesus,  so-called,  that  of  Benan  is 
the  most  charming  and  the  least  scientific  ;  those  by  Strauss  the  most 
systematic  and  educative  ;  that  of  Thomas  Scott,  "  The  English  Life 
of  Jesus,"  the  most  compendious  view  of  the  conflicts  of  the  Gospel 
narratives.  Evan  Meredith's  Prophet  of  Nazareth  (1864)  is  rather  a 
stringent  criticism  of  the  whole  Christian  system  of  ethics,  evidences, 
and  theology  (rejecting  supernaturalism  but  assuming  a  historical 
Christ)  than  a  scientific  search  for  a  personality  behind  the  Gospels. 
It  however  passes  many  acute  criticisms.  Later  German  Lives  of 
Christ,  such  as  those  of  Keim  and  Weiss,  are  useful  in  respect  of  their 
scholarly  comprehensiveness,  but  have  little  final  critical  value.  A 
more  advanced  stage  of  documentary  criticism  than  is  seen  in  any  of 
these  is  reached  in  the  second  section  of  the  article  Gospels,  by 
Professor  Schmiedel,  in  the  new  Encycloptedia  Biblica.  The  grounds 
on  which  the  present  section  carries  the  process  of  elimination  yet 
further  will  be  found  developed  in  the  author's  CJiristiimitif  <unf 
Mythology,  Part  III.  The  Goxpel  Myth*,  Div.  ii. ;  also  in  an  article 
in  the  Reformer,  July,  1901.  Concerning  the  Talmudic  Jesus  the 
documentary  data  are  given  by  Baring  Gould,  The  Lost  and  Hostile 
Gospels,  1874 ;  Joel,  Dlicke  in  die  Religionsgeschichte,  Breslau,  1880  ; 
Derenbourg,  Essai  aur  Vhittoire  et  la  Geographic  de  Palestine,  1867  ; 


SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE.  403 

T.Theodores,  essay  on  The  Talmud  in  Etnay*  <nid  Addresses  l>y  Pro- 
fessors and  Lecturer*  of  Owen's  College  (Macmillan,  1874),  pp.  368-370  ; 
and  Lightfoot,  Hora-  Hebraiccc,  on  Matt.  ii.  14,  xxvii.  56,  and  Luke 
vii.  2.  Compendious  views  of  the  process  of  textual  analysis,  as 
applied  to  the  Gospels  by  students  who  still  hold  to  the  historic 
actuality  of  the  Gospel  Jesus,  may  be  found  in  The  Synoptic  Problem, 
by  A.  J.  Jolly  (Macmillan,  1893) ;  The  Formation  of  the  Gospels,  by 
F.  P.  Badham  (Kegan  Paul,  2nd  ed.  1892) ;  The  Common  Tradition  of 
the  Synoptic  Gospels,  by  Dr.  Abbott  and  W.  G.  Rushbrooke  (Macmillan, 
1884) ;  and  The  First  Three  Goxpels,  by  J.  Estlin  Carpenter  (Sunday 
School  Association,  2nd  ed.  1890).  Of  the  extensive  continental 
literature  of  this  subject  during  the  past  half-century,  typical  and 
important  examples  are  Baur's  Kritische  Untersuchiingen  iiber  die 
kanonischen  Evangelien  (1847),  Scholten's  Het  oiulnte  Evangelie,  1868 
(tr.  in  German,  1869)  ;  Gustave  D'Eichthal's  Let  Evangiles,  1863 ; 
H.  J.  Holtzmann's  Die  xyiioptixclien  Evangelien,  ihr  Unsprung  und 
geschichtliche  Charakter,  1863  ;  and  Berthold  Weiss's  Text-kritik  der 
vier  Evanglien,  1899.  Holtzmann's  Lehrbuch  der  historisch- 
kritischen  Einleitun;/  in  das  Neue  Testament  (2te.  Aufl.  1885)  is  a  good 
summary  of  the  general  discussion. 

§  4.  Myth  of  the  Twelve  Apostles. 

As  to  the  Jewish  Twelve  Apostles,   consult  Jost,  Geschichte  des 
Judenthums,  1850,  ii.  159-60 ;  Kitto's    Cyclopedia  of  Biblical  Litera- 
ture, art.  Apostle ;  Basnage,  Histoire  des  Juifs,  ed.  1716,  liv.  ii.  ch.  ii. 
§§  7,  8,  and  liv.  iii.  ch.  ii.   §§   10,  11;    Mosheim's  Commentaries  as 
before  cited,  Eng.  tr.  i.  121 ;    and  other  authorities  discussed  by  the 
author  in  the  National  Reformer,  1887,  May  8th  and  15th,  November 
20th  and  27th,  December  4th ;  also  in  Christianity  and  Mythology, 
Pt.  III.  Div.  i.  §  19.     For  recent  views  on  the  alleged  apostolic  epistles 
see  Professor  Arnold  Meyer's  work,  cited  under  §  1.     The  text  of  the 
important  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles,  first  published  in  1883,  is 
ably  edited  and  translated  by  Professors  Hitchcock  and  Brown  (London 
ed.  Nimmo),  whose  version  was  made  the  basis  of  a  revised  translation, 
with  variorum  notes,  by  the  author,  published  in  the  National  Reformer, 
November  1st  and  8th,  1891.     The  Teaching  has  appeared  also  in  the 
following  translations  : — By  Dr.  Farrar,  in  the  Contemporary  Revieiv, 
May,  1884 ;  by  the  Rev.  A.  Gordon  (tr.  sold  at  Essex  Hall,  London) ; 
by  M.  Sabatier  with  text  and  commentary  (Paris,  1885) ;  by  Professor 
Harnack ;  and  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Heron  in  his  Church  of  the  Apostolic 
Age,  1888.     As  to  its  obviously  Jewish  basis  compare  Dr.  Taylor's 
Teaching  of  tJie  Twelve  Apostles,  1886,  with  Harnack's  Die  Apoxtellehre 
und  diejildischen  beiden  Wege,  1886.     On  the " Brethren  of  the  Lord" 


404  SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE. 

see  Bishop  Lightfoot's  excursus,  reprinted  in  his  Dissertations  on  the 
Apostolic  Age.  The  Judas  myth  and  the  characteristics  of  Peter  are 
discussed  in  Christianity  and  Mythology,  Part  III.  Div.  i.  §§  20,  21. 
For  the  Egyptian  God  Petra  see  the  Book  of  the  Dead,  Budge's  tr., 
p.  123. 

§  5.  Primary  Forma  of  the  Cult. 

The  theory  that  the  gospel  narrative  of  the  Last  Supper,  the  Passion, 
the  Betrayal,  Trial,  Crucifixion,  and  Resurrection,  constitute  a 
mystery-play  or  plays,  is  set  forth  by  the  author  in  an  article  in  the 
Reformer,  November,  1901.  On  pre-Christian  Semitic  "mysteries" 
see  Professor  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  Lect.  vi.-xi ; 
and  on  the  ancient  conception  of  sacrifice  in  general  consult  that  work ; 
also  Wellhausen's  Prolegomena  to  the  History  of  Israel,  Eng.  tr.  Pt.I. 
ch.  iii.;  the  work  of  Fustel  de  Coulanges  on  La  Cite  Antique ;  and  Mr. 
J.  G.  Frazer's  great  treatise,  The  Golden  Bough  (2nd  ed.  3  vols.  1900). 
Concerning  the  private  religious  societies  among  the  Greeks,  the 
standard  authority  is  M.  Foucart,  Lex  Associations  religieuses  chez  les 
Grew,  1873;  see  also  ch.  xviii.  of  Renan's  Les  Apotres.  The  imitation 
of  pagan  institutions  in  the  Christian  Church  is  dealt  with  by  the  late 
Dr.  Edwin  Hatch,  in  his  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages  upon  the 
<  'hrixtmn  Church,  1890  ;  and  some  of  the  relations  between  the  Jewish 
Passover  and  coincident  pagan  feasts  are  suggested  in  the  valuable  old 
treatise  of  J.  Spencer,  De  Legibus  Hebraorum  (1685  and  later),  lib.  ii. 
cap.  4.  The  part  played  by  the  child-image  in  pagan  and  Christian 
mysteries  is  notea  in  Christianity  and  Mythology,  Pt.  II.  Christ  and 
Krixh  )td ,  sec.  xiii.  On  other  details  consult  Schiirer,  History  of  the  Jewish 
People  in  the  Time  of  Christ,  Div.  II.  The  question  as  to  the  rise  of 
baptism  comes  up  in  the  Clementine  Homilies  and  Recognitions,  on 
which  see  Baur,  Church  History,  Eng.  tr.,  vol.  i. ;  where  also  will  be 
found  the  material  of  the  controversy  on  the  date  of  the  Easter  sacrament. 
As  to  the  manner  of  crucifixion  in  antiquity  see  Dr.  W.  Brandt's  Die 
evangelische  Geschichte  und  der  Urxprung  des  Christenthums,  1893, 
Theil  II,  §  5,  and  Pf.  Hermann  Fulda's  treatise,  Das  Kreuz  und  die 
Kreuzigung  (Breslau,  1878). 

§  6.  Ri»e  of  Gentile  Chri*ti*m. 

The  early  and  bitter  strife  between  the  Jewish  and  Gentile  parties 
in  the  Christist  movement  was  first  exhaustively  studied  by  the 
Tubingen  school.  See  the  important  works  of  its  founder,  F.  C.  Baur, 
Das  Christenthum  und  die  christliche  Kirche  der  drei  ersten  Jahr- 
luiiidcrte,  1853  (Eng.  tr.  ent.  The  Church  History  of  the  First  Three 
Centuries,  1878,  2  vols.)  and  2yaulus,  1845  (Eng.  tr.  2  vols.  1873) ; 


SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE.  405 

also  the  work  of  Zeller  on  the  Contents  and  Origin  of  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  (Eng.  tr.  2  vols.  1875,  with  Overbeck's  Introduction  to  the 
Acts,  from  De  Wette's  Handbook).  Compare  the  somewhat  more 
conservative  treatise  of  Weizsacker,  The  Apoxtolic  Age  of  the  Ckliitfan 
Church,  Eng.  tr.  2  vols.  1894,  and  the  orthodox  Neander's  History  of 
the  Planting  and  Training  of  the  Christian  Church  by  the  Apostle* 
(Eng.  tr.  2  vols.  1851),  where  however  some  decisive  admissions  are 
made  as  to  the  narrative  of  the  Acts.  The  most  comprehensive  survey 
of  the  documentary  discussion  down  to  the  present  time  is  J.  Jiingst's 
Die  Quellen  der  ApONtelgeschichte  (Gotha,  1895).  Some  interesting 
concessions  are  made  by  Professor  Ramsay  in  his  work  on  The  Chtm-Ii 
and  the  Roman  Empire  before  A.D.  170  (1893).  On  the  Gentile 
parallels  discussed  consult  Frazer's  Golden  Bough,  and  Havet's  Le 
Chrixtianixnie  et  *r.s  origines.  The  questions  raised  by  the  vogue  of  the 
term  "Chrestos"  are  well  set  forth  and  discussed  in  the  brochure  of 
the  late  Dr.  J.  Barr  Mitchell,  Chrextos :  A  Religious  Epithet,  its 
Import  and  Influence  (Williams  and  Norgate,  1880).  Compare  Renan, 
Saint  Paul,  p.  363,  and  refs.  Various  aspects  of  the  general  problem 
aresst  forth  in  tb&  Monumental  Christianity  of  J.  P.  Lundy  (New  York, 
1876).  For  a  good  view  of  Gnosticism  see  C.  W.  King,  The  Gnostic.* 
and  their  Remain*,  2nd  ed.  1887  ;  and  for  a  survey  of  Samaritan  tenets 
see  J.  W.  Nutt,  Fragment  of  a  Samaritan,  Targum,  1874  (Introduc- 
tion), and  Reland's  Dbxertatio  de  Monte  Garizim,  in  his  Dm.  Misc., 
Pars  I,  1706.  A  view  of  the  ancient  practices  of  cutting  and  gashing 
in  the  presence  of  the  dead,  etc.,  is  given  in  John  Spencer's  treatise 
De  Legibus  Hebrceorum,  lib.  ii.  cc.  13,  14.  The  Myth  of  Simon 
Magus  is  discussed  by  the  author  in  the  National  Reformer,  January 
29th,  February  5th,  and  February  19th,  1893. 

§  7.  Growth  of  the  Christ  Myth. 

For  details  and  references  as  to  the  pagan  myths  embodied  in  the 
Gospels,  see  the  author's  Christianity  and  Mythology,  Pts.  II  and 
III.  The  evolution  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Logon  is  discussed  by 
Professor  James  Drummond,  in  The  Jewish  Messiah,  1877,  and  Philo 
Judccus,  1888 ;  by  M.  Nicolas,  Des  doctrines  religieiises  des  jnifs, 
1860 ;  and  in  Schiirer's  Jeiciah  People  in  the  Time  of  Christ,  Div.  II. 
vol.  iii.  Mr.  Frazer  presents  the  evidence  as  to  the  Semitic  usage  of 
sacrificing  a  mock-king  in  his  Golden  Bough,  where  however  the 
problem  is  obscured  by  the  acceptance  of  the  Gospels  as  historical 
records.  See  also  the  article  on  Jesus  als  Saturnalien-Konig,  by 
P.  Wendland,  in  Hermes,  xxxiii.  (1898). 


406  SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE. 

CHAPTER  II.— THE  ENVIRONMENT. 
§  1.  Social  and  Mental  Conditions  in  the  Eoman  Empire. 

The  sociological  forces  and  tendencies  in  the  Greek  and  Roman 
civilisations  are  discussed  in  the  author's  Introduction  to  English 
Politic*,  Part  I.  ;  also  in  A  Short  History  of  Freethoitght,  ch.  iii.  v.  vi. 
and  vii.  For  the  social  bearing  of  ancient  religion  consult  Fustel  de 
Coulanges,  La  Cite  Antique ;  Boissier,  La  Religion  romaine  tTAugmte 
aux  Antonins  (2  torn.  4e  edit.  1892) ;  Burckhardt,  Griechische  Cultur- 
geschichte,  3  Bde.  1898-1900  ;  Farnell,  The  Cults  of  the  Greek  State* 
(vol.  i.  Oxford,  1896)  ;  and  Maury,  Hixtoire  des  religions  de  la  Grece 
antique,  3  torn.  1857.  Renan  has  many  suggestive  pages  on  social 
conditions,  particularly  in  Lea  Apotres ;  but  heed  must  be  taken  of 
the  frequent  contradictions  in  his  generalisations.  As  to  the  religious 
life  of  the  Greek  private  religious  societies,  see  ch.  xvii.  of  LesApotres; 
the  treatise  of  M.  Foucart,  before  cited  ;  Dr.  Hatch's  Bampton  lectures 
on  The  Organisation  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches;  and  his  Hibbert 
lectures  on  The  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages  upon  the  Chris- 
tian Church. 

§  2.  Jewish  Orthodoxy. 

Schiirer's  Jewish  People  in  the  Time  of  Christ  gives  the  main  clues 
from  Josephus,  the  Talmud,  and  the  0.  T.  apocrypha.  See  further 
M.  Friedlander's  Zur  Entxtehungsge*chichtc  den  Cltristenthunis  (Wien, 
1894)  for  light  as  to  the  relations  between  the  Pharisees  and  the  common 
people.  For  a  good  general  view  see  Reuss,  Histoire  de  la  theologie 
chretien  ne  au  slecle  apostolique  (2e  e"dit.  1860),  liv.  i.  Nicolas,  Dec 
doctrines  religieuses  des  Juifx,  1860,  gives  a  fuller  research.  Accounts 
of  the  surviving  "  Nestorians  "  are  given  in  Jl/iWojwry  Researches  in 
Armenia,  by  E.  Smith  and  H.  D.  0.  Dwight,  1834,  and  in  Dr.  A. 
Grant's  The  Nestorians,  2nd  ed.  1843. 

§  3.  Je irish  Sects. 

A  good  conspectus  and  discussion  of  the  data  as  to  theEssenes  is  given 
by  Dr.  Ginsburg  in  his  pamphlet  The  E**ene*,  1864.  See  also  Schiirer, 
Div.  II.  vol.  ii.,  and  Bishop  Lightfoot,  Dissertation*  on  the 
Apostolic  Age. 

§  4.  Gentile  Cult*. 

The  best  mythological  dictionary  is  Roscher's  great  Autfiihrlichef 
Lexikon  der  griechischen  und  romischen  Mytliologie  (in  progress),  but 
Preller's  Griechichc  Mi/thologie  and  Romische  Mytholofjie  and  Smith's 


SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE.  407 


Dictionary  of  Greek  and  llowtin  ttingrapJiy  and  Mythology  (3  vols. 
1844-49)  give  most  of  the  data.  In  regard  to  the  cults  of  Attis 
and  Adonis,  consult  further  Frazer's  Golden  Bough  and  Foucart  Des 
Association*  religicnses  cliez  les  Great;  for  the  cult  of  Dionysos,  the 
same;  also  (with  caution)  Mr.  R.  Brown's  Great  Dionysiak  Myth, 
2  vols.  1877-8,  and  the  older  Recherche*  *nr  le  Culte  de  llacchit*  of 
Rolle  (3  torn.  1824),  both  works  of  great  learning.  Lucian's  treatise 
DeDea  Syra  gives  special  information  on  Syrian  religion.  Sidelights 
are  thrown  on  the  cults  in  question  by  the  Christian  Fathers,  in  par- 
ticular Julius  Firmicus  Maternus,  De  errore  profanarum  religion  urn 
(best  ed.  Halm's)  ;  Epiphanius,  De  Haresi*  :  Hippolytus,  Refutation 
of  all  Heresies  (trans,  in  Ante-Nicene  Library,  vol.  vi.).  The  main 
clues  to  the  Osiris  cult  are  in  The  Book  of  the  Dead  (best  Eng.  tr.  by 
Budge,  1898)  and  Plutarch's  treatise  On  MX  and  Osiris,  which  should 
be  read,  however,  in  the  light  of  Tiele's  or  some  other  compe- 
tent History  of  Egyptian  Religion.  The  main  data  as  to  Mithraism 
are  collected  in  the  author's  essay  in  Religions  System*  of  the  World 
(3rd  ed.  1892). 

§  5.  Ethics  :  Popular  and  Philosophic. 

The  parallels  and  coincidences  between  the  teachings  of  Paul  and  of 
Seneca  are  fully  set  forth  by  Bishop  Lightfoot  in  the  excursus  on  Paul 
and  Seneca  reprinted  in  his  Discussions  on  the  Apostolic  Age,  where 
also  the  significance  of  the  parallels  is  considered,  and  the  literature  of 
the  subject  described.  In  the  general  connection  may  be  consulted 
Havet's  Le  Christianisme  et  sen  origines,  4  torn.  1872-84;  Martha's 
Lea  Moralities  sous  V  empire  romain,  14e  edit.  1881;  Lecky's  History 
of  European  Morals  from  Augustus  to  Charlemagne;  Baur's  Drei 
Abhandlungen  zur  Geschichte  der  alten  Philosophic  und  ihres  VerJialtnisx 
zuni  Chrixtenthuui  (new  ed.  1876),  where  there  is  a  thorough  discussion 
of  Seneca's  case  ;  Uhlhorn's  Conflict  of  Christianity  ivith  Heathenism 
(Eng.  tr.  from  3rd  Ger.  ed.  1879)  ;  Renan's3/«re^ureZe,  and  ch.  xvii. 
of  Les  Apotres  ;  J.  A.  Farrer's  Paganism  and  Christianity,  1891  ; 
W.  M.  Flinders  Petrie's  Religion  and  Conscience  in  Ancient  Egypt, 
1898  ;  and  Ludwig  Feuerbach's  E**euce  of  Christianity,  Eng.  tr.  by 
Marian  Evans  (George  Eliot).  The  Jewish  Rabbinical  ethic  is 
defended  as  against  Christian  attack  in  an  able  article  on  "  Rabbinic 
Judaism  and  the  Epistles  of  Paul  "  by  C.  G.  Montefiore  in  the  Jewish 
Quarterly  Review  for  January,  1901.  Some  of  the  other  issues  are 
discussed  in  detail  in  the  author's  Short  History  of  Freethought,  cc. 
iv.  vi.  vii. 


408  SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE. 

CHAPTER  III.— CONDITIONS  OF  SURVIVAL. 
§  1.  Popular  Appeal. 

See  the  references  to  eh.  ii.  §  5,  concerning  the  prevalent  moral 
ideas.  As  to  the  Montanists  and  other  ascetic  and  antinomian  sects 
see  Baur,  Church  History,  Eng.  tr.  vol.  i.  Pt.  III.,  also  Hatch,  as 
cited.  Concerning  the  results  of  the  need  to  appeal  to  the  pagan 
populace,  note  the  admissions  of  Mosheim,  Ecclesiastical  History, 
2  Cent.  Pt.  II.  chs.  iii.  and  iv.;  of  Dr.  John  Stoughton,  Ages  of  the 
Church,  1855,  Lect.  iv.;  of  Waddington,  History  of  the  Christian 
Church,  1833,  pp.  87,  89 ;  and  of  Milman,  History  of  Christianity, 
B.  iv.  cc.  i.  and  iii. 

§  2.  Economic  Causation. 

The  organisation  of  the  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  priesthoods  may 
be  gathered  from  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  on  the  Religion  of  the 
Ancient  Babylonians.  On  the  Greek  priesthoods  compare  Burckhardt, 
Griechische  Culturgescliichte,  Bd.  II.  Abs.  II.  §  ii.  As  to  the  wealth 
of  the  priestly  caste  in  Egypt  see  Diodorus  Siculus  ;  and  on  that  of 
Rome,  Gibbon's  15th  chapter.  On  the  later  Judaic  priestly  finance 
see  the  references  given  as  to  the  Jewish  Twelve  Apostles  under  ch.  i. 
§  4.  The  process  of  growth  of  an  order  of  "  ethical  lecturers  "  is 
indicated  by  C.  Martha,  Lex  Moralistes  sous  V empire  romain,  4e  6dit. 
1881 ;  also  by  E.  Havet,  Le  Christianisme  et  ses  origines  (1872),  tom.i. 
ch.  iii.  Compare  Grote,  History  of  Greece,  end  of  ch.  xlvi.  and  his 
Plato  and  the  Other  Companions  of  Sokrates,  per  index,  as  to  the 
sophists.  The  financial  side  of  the  pagan  mysteries  is  partly  illus- 
trated in  the  Metamorphoses  of  Apuleius.  Compare  also  Foucart, 
Des  Associations  religieuses  chez  les  Grecs.  Gibbon's  fifteenth 
chapter  deals  in  the  main  with  a  later  period,  but  throws  general 
light  on  this  also.  See  also  Renan's  Marc  Aurele,  ch.  xxxi.  ;  and 
especially  Dr.  Hatch's  Hibbert  Lectures,  lect.  iv.,  and  Lecky's History 
of  European  Morals. 

§  3.  Organisation  and  Sacred  Book*. 

Dr.  Hatch's  Organisation  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches  recog- 
nises, on  nominally  orthodox  principles,  the  fact  that  the  structure 
was  a  natural  adaptation  to  environment,  on  old  type-lines.  Of  the 
movement  of  Apollonius  of  Tyana,  a  popular  account  is  given  by 
Professor  A.  ReVille,  Aixdlonius  of  Tyana,  the  Pagan  Christ  of  the 
Third  Century,  Eng.  tr.  18G6  ;  and  a  more  judicial  one  by  Baur  in 
his  Drei  AbJiandluiifien.  Of  a  perception  of  the  dramatic  origin  of  the 


SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE.  409 

main  parts  of  the  Gospel  narrative  (discussed  in  the  author's  (7/n<- 
tianity  ami  Mythology,  as  above  noted,  and  in  art.  "The  Gospel 
Mystery  Play  "  in  the  Reformer,  November,  1901)  there  is  as  yet 
little  or  no  trace  in  contemporary  literature  on  Christian  origins. 
See  however  Dr.  Moncure  Conway's  Solomon  and  Solomonic  Literature 
(Chicago,  Open  Court  Pub.  Co.  1899),  p.  204,  note;  and  compare 
Milman,  History  of  Christianity,  B.  iv.  ch.  ii.  To  the  old  dis- 
cussion on  the  supposed  dramatic  character  of  the  Apocalypse  the 
clues  are  given  in  Moses  Stuart's  Commentary  on  the  Apocalypse.  On 
the  formation  of  the  canon  see  the  references  to  ch.  i.  §  1.  As  to 
Manicheeism  see  those  given  below,  ch.  ii. 

§  4.  Concession  and  Fixation. 

On  developments  of  doctrine  in  general  the  fullest  modern  treatise 
is  Harnack's  History  of  Dogma  (Eng.  tr.  1894,  6  vols.),  but  the 
critical  student  must  revise  many  of  Harnack's  judgments.  The 
same  author's  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Dogma  (Eng.  tr.  1893)  are  at 
many  points  suggestive ;  and  Hagenbach's  History  of  Dogma  is  still 
useful.  Hatch  is  well  worth  consulting  in  this  connection. 

§  5.  Cosmic  Philosophy. 

As  to  the  fourth  Gospel  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Logos,  see  the 
references  given  for  ch.  i.  §  7  ;  also  the  fourth  and  fifth  chapters  of 
Renan's  Les  Evangiles,  which  give  his  latest  ideas  on  the  problem  ; 
Reuss's  Histoire  de  la  tJieologie  chretienne  au  siecle  apostolique,  2e 
e"dit.  1860,  torn.  ii.  liv.  vii.;  and  J.  J.  Tayler's  treatise,  An  Attempt  to 
Ascertain  the  Character  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  (1867).  Baur  and 
Strauss  may  also  be  profitably  studied. 


PART  II.— CHRISTIANITY  FROM  THE  SECOND 
CENTURY  TO  THE  RISE  OF  MOHAMME- 
DANISM. 

CHAPTER  I.— SCOPE    AND    CHARACTER    OF   THE    UNESTAB- 
LISHED  CHURCH. 

§  1.  Numbers  and  Inner  Life. 

Gibbon's  fifteenth  chapter  is  still  valuable  here.  Compare  Hatch, 
Organisation,  and  Renan,  Saint  Paul,  concluding  chapter;  and  the 
church  historians  generally.  As  to  Britain,  see  Wright's  The  Roman, 


410  SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE. 

the  Celt,  and  the  Saxon,  4th  ed.  1885.  On  the  personnel  and  emo- 
tional life  of  the  early  church,  compare  Louis  Menard,  Etudes  sur  lea 
origines  du  Christianisme,  1893;  Renan,  L*  Eglise  Chretienne  and 
Marc-Aurele;  Tertullian,  passim;  3.  A.  Farrer,  Paganism  and  Chris- 
tianity; Dr.  John  Stoughton,  Ages  of  the  Church  (pp.  42-43— orthodox 
admissions). 

§  2.  Growth  of  the  Priesthood. 

Hatch,  as  before  cited,  is  here  a  specially  good  guide  ;  and  Neander, 
General  History  of  the  Christian  Religion  and  Church  (trans,  in 
Bohn  Lib.)  gives  a  copious  narrative  (vol.  i.  sect.  ii.).  On  episcopal 
policy,  compare  the  series  of  popular  monographs  under  the  title 
"The  Fathers  for  English  Readers"  ( S. P. C.K.)  and  the  anonymous 
treatise  On  the  State  of  Man  Subsequent  to  the  Promulgation  of 
Christianity  (1852),  Part  II.  ch.  iv.  Mosheim  (Reid's  ed.  of  Murdock's 
trans.)  deserves  study.  The  question  of  priestly  morals  is  handled 
in  almost  all  histories  of  the  Church.  Cp.  Gibbon,  cc.  xxi.  xxv.  xxxviii. 
Lea's  History  of  Sacerdotal  Celibacy  (2nd  ed.  1884)  is  a  full  and 
valuable  record.  As  to  the  papacy,  see  references  given  below, 
Part  III.  ch.  i.§3. 

§  3.  The  Gnostic  Movement  in  the  Second  Century. 

Baur's  Die  christiche  Gnosis  (1835)  remains  the  most  comprehensive 
study  of  this  subject ;  but  Mr.  C.  W.  King's  The  Gnostics  and  their 
Remain*  adds  to  his  elucidations.  Matter's  Histoire  critique  du 
Gnosticiume  (2e  £dit.  1843-4)  remains  worth  study ;  as  is  Neander's 
general  account  of  the  Gnostic  sects  in  vol.  ii.  of  his  General  History. 
See  shorter  accounts  in  Baur's  Church  History  (vol.  i.),  in  Mosheim's, 
and  in  that  of  Jeremie  (1855). 

§  4.  Marcionism  and  Montanism. 

Neander,  Hatch,  and  Baur,  as  last  cited,  give  good  views.  Ter- 
tullian, who  wrote  a  treatise  Against  Marcion,  and  himself  became 
a  Montanist,  is  a  primary  authority. 

§  5.  Rite*  and  Ceremonies. 

Rmgh&m'sChrittian  Antiquities  (rep.  1855)  gives  abundant  details; 
but  see  also  Smith's  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities.  Mosheim 
traces  the  development  century  by  century. 

§  6.  Strifes  over  Primary  Dogma. 
These  may  be  followed  in  brief  in  Mosheim,  or  at  length  in  Harnack's 


SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE.  411 

History  of  Dogma,  or  in  Hagenbach's  earlier  manual,  which  is 
more  concise.  Hatch's  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  is  light-giving  at 
some  points ;  and  Dr.  Albert  Reville's  Histoire  tin  dogme  de  la  divinite  du 
Jesu*  Christ  (2e  edit.  1876)  is  a  good  conspectus  of  its  subject.  For  a 
briefer  general  view  see  Stoughton's  Aye*  of  the  Church,  Lect.  v.  and 
vii.  The  history  of  the  so-called  Apostles'  Creed  is  fully  discussed  by 
M.  Nicolas,  Le  Symbole  den  Apotres,  1867,  and  in  Harnack's  work  on 
the  same  subject  (Eng.  tr.  1901). 


CHAPTER  II.— RELATIONS  OF  CHURCH  AND  STATE. 
§  1.  Persecution*. 

Consult  Gibbon,  ch.  xvi.;  Niebuhr,  Lecture*  on  Roman  H istory,  Eng. 
tr.  Lect.  cxli.;  and  Boissier,  La  Fin  du  Paganisme  (2e  edit.  1894),  torn  i., 
Appendice,  for  critical  views,  as  distinguished  from  those  of  the  eccle- 
siastical historians.  Compare  also  Milman's  account,  in  the  first 
chapter  of  his  History  of  Latin  Christianity.  The  alleged  Neronian 
persecution  is  specially  sifted  by  Hochart,  Etudes  an  sujet  de  la  perse- 
cution clcs  Chretiens  sous  Xeron,  1885.  For  a  complete  record  of  the 
cult  of  the  emperors  see  Le  Culte  Imperial,  son  histoire  et  son  organi- 
sation, par  1'Abbe"  E.  Beurlier,  1891. 

§§§  2,  3,  4  (see  Corrigenda).  Establishment  and  Creed-Making;  Re- 
action under  Julian;  He-establishment;  Disestablishment  of  Pagan- 
ism. 

Boissier's  La  Fin  du  Paganisme  goes  very  fully  into  the  question 
of  Constantine's  conversion  and  policy,  but  does  not  supersede 
Beugnot,  Histoire  de  la  destruction  du  paganisme  en  Occident,  1835, 
2  torn.  (Both  are  misleading  on  the  subject  of  the  labarum,  as  to  which 
see  the  variorum  notes  in  Reid's  Mosheim,  and  in  Bohn  Gibbon,  ad  loc.) 
Compare  Gibbon,  cc.  xix.-xxv.,  and  Hatch,  Organisation.  Newman's 
Arians  of  the  Fourth  Century  gives  an  intensely  orthodox  view  of  its 
subject.  Mosheim  and  Milman  and  Neander  are  more  judicial.  See 
also  Harnack's  Outlines,  and  the  references  given  above  to  ch.  i.  §  6. 
On  Manichoeism  it  is  still  well  to  consult  Beausobre,  Histoire  critique 
de  Manicliee  et  du  Manicheisme.  Compare  Mosheim,  Commentaries  on 
the  Affairs  of  the  Christians,  vol.  iii.,  and  the  account  of  Neander, 
General  History,  vol.  ii.  Rendall's  The  Emperor  Julian:  Christianity 
and  Paganism,  1879,  is  a  learned  and  competent  research,  usually  fair, 
and  gives  light  on  the  previous  reigns,  as  well  as  on  Julian's.  Gibbon's 
survey  here  remains  important.  On  Gregory  of  Nazianzun  there  is  a 
monograph  by  Ullmann  (Eng.  tr.  1851).  See  Milman  as  to  the  falsity 


412  SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE. 

of  the  death-legend  concerning  Julian.  As  to  the  disestablishment  of 
paganism,  Beugnot  is  the  best  guide,  but  Boissier  is  discursively  in- 
structive. 

CHAPTER  III.— FAILURE  WITH  SURVIVAL. 

The  narrative  may  be  checked  throughout  by-  Neander's  General 
History  of  the  Christian  Religion  and  Church  (trans,  in  Bohn  Lib.); 
by  Mosheim,  with  the  variorum  notes  of  Reid's  edition  ;  by  Gibbon's 
chapters ;  by  the  histories  of  dogma ;  by  the  above-cited  monographs 
on  the  Fathers,  St.  Chrysostom'ti  Picture  of  his  Aye  (S.P.C.K.  1875), 
and  Rev.  \V.  R.  Stephens'  St.  Chrysostom,  His  Life  and  Times  (1872) ; 
by  Milman's  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  vols.  i.  and  ii.;  by  Finlay's 
History  of  Greece  (Tozer's  ed.),  vols.  i.  and  ii.;  and  by  Bury's  History 
of  the  later  Roman  Empire.  On  the  intellectual  life  compare  further 
Boissier,  La  Fin  da  Paganisme  ;  Ampere,  Histoire  litteraire  de  la 
France,  1839,  torn.  i.  and  ii.;  and  Lecky's  History  of  European 
Morals. 


PART  III.— MEDIEVAL   CHRISTIANITY. 
CHAPTER  I.— EXPANSION  AND  ORGANISATION. 

§  1.  Position  in  the  Seventh  Century. 

Hatch  (Oruanixatioit)  is  still  a  guide.  For  special  details  consult 
Smith's  Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities.  Bede's  Ecclesiastical 
History  gives  some  specific  ideas  as  to  the  early  life  of  the  medieval 
Church. 

§  2.  Methods  of  Expansion. 

Neander's  General  History  of  the  Christian  Religion  and  Church, 
Milman's  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  Hardwick's  History  of  the 
Christian  Church:  Middle  Aye  (1853),  and  the  variorum  notes  in 
Reid's  Mosheim,  give  most  of  the  documentary  clues.  But  national 
histories  should  specially  be  consulted  at  this  stage — e.a.,  Crichton  and 
Wheaton's  Scandinavia  (2nded.  1838, 2  vols.),Geijer's  History  of  Siccdcn 
(Eng.  tr.  of  first  3  vols.  in  1,  no  date),  Krasinski's  Sketch  of  the  ReUuioiix 
History  of  the  Slavonic  Nations  (1851). 

§  3.  Growth  of  the  Papacy. 

In  addition  to  the  general  histories  consult  Qregorovius,  GetcJiirhtc 
//cr  Start t  Horn  (Eng.  trans.  2nd  ed.  1901,  in  progress),  and  The 


SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE.  413 

Pope  and  the  Council*,  by  "Janus"  (tr.  1869  from  German).  Hefele's 
History  of  the  Christian  Councils  (^ng.  tr.,  1871-1896,  5  vols.),  though 
by  a  Catholic  scholar,  is  generally  accepted  as  the  standard  modern 
work  on  its  subject.  Hallam's  View  of  the  State  of  Europe 
during  the  Middle  Age*  is  still  valuable  for  its  general  views.  Fuller 
details  may  be  had  from  monographs  on  leading  popes— e.g.,  Voigt's 
Hildebrand  nml  sein  Zeitalter  (French  trans,  by  Abbe*  Jager,  with 
added  notes  and  documents,  1847)  and  Langeron's  Gre"goire  VII.  et 
les  oriuines  de.  la  doctrine  ultramontaine  (1874).  On  the  ancient 
Egyptian  parallels  see  Maspero,  Hixtoire  ancienne  des  peuples  de 
V  orient. 


CHAPTER  II.— RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION  AND  STRIFE. 

Consult  the  ecclesiastical  historians  already  cited,  and  compare 
R.  L.  Poole,  Illustrations  of  the  History  of  Medieval  Thought  (1884), 
as  to  Agobard  and  Claudius.  For  the  special  worships  of  Mary  and 
Joseph,  see  the  popular  Catholic  manual  "  The  Glories  of  Mary,"  and 
P.  Paul  Barrie's  "  Glories  of  Joseph  "  (Eng.  trans.  Dublin,  1843  and 
later) — extracts  in  C.  H.  Collette's  Dr.  Newman  and  his  Religious 
Opinions,  1866 — also  Newman's  Letter  to  Dr.  Pusey,  as  there  cited. 
Sketches  of  the  history  of  auricular  confession  are  given  in  Rev.  B.W. 
Savile's  Primitive  and  Catholic  Faith,  1875,  ch.  xiii.,  and  in  Con- 
fession, a  doctrinal  and  historical  essay,  by  L.  Desanctis,  Eng.  tr. 
1878  ;  and  sketches  of  the  history  of  indulgences  in  Lea's  History  of 
the  Inquisition,  i.  41-47;  De  Potter's  Exprit  de  VEglise,  vii.,  22-29  ; 
and  Lea's  Studie*  in  Church  History,  1869,  p.  450.  Of  the  Albigen- 
sian  crusades  a  full  narrative  is  given  by  Sisrnondi,  Histoire  des  Fran- 
cais,  torn.  vi.  and  vii. — chapters  collected  and  translated  in  Eng. vol. ,  His- 
tory of  the  Crusades  against  the  Albigenses  (1826).  On  the  rationalistic 
heresies  consult  Ueberweg's  Histonj  of  Pldlosopliy ,  Poole's  Illustra- 
tions of  Medieval  Thought,  and  Renan's  Averroeset  VAverrolxme.  On 
the  anti-clerical  and  anti-papal  heresies  compare  Neander,  Mosheim, 
Milman,  Hardwick,  and  Poole.  The  fortunes  of  the  Lollard  move- 
ment are  discussed  in  the  author's  Dynamics  of  Religion. 


CHAPTER  III— THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  AND  STRUCTURE. 

Of  the  historians  cited  in  the  last  chapter,  most  are  serviceable 
here.  Consult  in  addition  Lea's  Superttition  and  Force  (3rd  ed. 
1878),  Berington's  Literary  History  of  the  Middle  Age*,  Dunham's 
Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  Ampere's  Histoire  Litteraire,  before 
cited.  There  are  good  lives  of  Savonarola  by  Perrens  (French),  and 


414  SYNOPSIS  OF  LITEBATUBE. 

Villari,  Eng.  trans.  See  also  J.  A.  Symonds,  Renaissance  in  Italy  : 
Age  of  the  Despots.  On  slavery  compare  Larroque,  De  Vesclavage  chez 
les  nations  chretiennes  (2e  e"dit,  1864) ;  or  see  the  author's  Introduction 
to  English  Politics,  per  index.  An  excellent  general  view  of  the 
Crusades  is  given  in  the  manual  by  Sir  G.  W.  Cox  ("  Epochs  of 
History  "  series).  The  latest  expert  survey  of  the  subject  is  that  of 
M.  Seignobos,  in  the  Hixtoire  generate  of  MM.  Lavisse  and  Rambaud. 


CHAPTER  IV.— THE  INTELLECTUAL  LIFE. 

Again  the  same  general  authorities  may  be  referred  to,  in  particular 
Lea's  History  of  the  Inquisition;  also  White's  History  of  the  Warfare 
of  Science  with  Theology  (2  vols.  1896),  Gebhart's  Les  origines  de  la 
renaissance  (1879),  Burckhardt's  Civilisation  of  the  Renaisssance  in 
Italy  (Eng.  tr.  in  1  vol.  1892),  Buckle's  Introduction  to  the  History  of 
Civilisation  in  England,  Whewell's  History  of  the  Inductive  Sciences, 
Baden  Powell's  History  of  Natural  Philosophy  (1834)  ;  and  for  the 
different  countries  their  special  histories.  Draper's  Intellectual 
Development  of  Europe  is  to  be  followed  with  caution.  As  to  Gerbert, 
see  the  Vie  de  Gerbert  of  M.  Olleris,  1867. 


CHAPTER  V.— BYZANTINE  CHRISTIANITY. 

Finlay's  History  of  (Modern)  Greece  is  the  main  authority  in  English 
apart  from  the  ecclesiastical  histories. 


PART  IV.— MODERN  CHRISTIANITY. 

CHAPTER  I.— THE  BEFOBMATION. 

In  addition  to  Neander;  Mosheim;  Milman's  History  of  Latin 
Christianity;  and  Hardwick's  Church  History;  The  Reformation 
(rep.  1886),  consult  Ullmann's  Reformers  before  the  Reformation 
(Eng.  tr.  2  vols.  1855),  McCrie's  Histories  of  the  Reformation  in  Spain 
and  Italy,  Banke's  History  of  the  Reformation  and  History  of  the 
Popes  (Eng.  tr.),  Beard's  Hibbert  Lectures  on  the  Bef ormation , 
Felice's  Histoire  des  Protestants  de  France  (trans,  in  Eng.), 
Krasinski's  History  of  the  Reformation  in  Poland,  Professor 
H.  M.  Baird's  History  of  the  Rise  of  the  Huguenots,  2  vols.  1880 ; 


SYNOPSIS  OF  LITERATURE.  415 

also  the  current  Lives  of  the  leading  reformers,  and  the  special 
histories  of  the  nations.  Creighton's  History  of  the  Papacy  dtirina 
the  Reformation  (6  vols.)  has  special  merit  as  a  fresh  research. 
As  to  the  witch-burning  mania  consult  Lecky's  Rise  and  Influence  of 
Rationalism  in  Europe.  On  the  Jesuists  compare  Nicollini's  History 
of  the  Jesuits,  1853.  On  the  medical  work  of  Servetus  and  others  see 
an  interesting  article  by  Dr.  Austin  Flint,  in  New  York  Medical 
Journal,  June  29th,  1901. 


CHAPTER  IL— PROGRESS  OF  ANTI-CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT. 

As  to  the  physical  sciences,  compare  White,  Baden  Powell,  Whewell, 
and  Draper,  as  above  cited,  also  Draper's  Conflict  beticeen  Religion  and 
Science  (Internat.  Lib.  of  Science).  On  the  development  of  philosophy, 
cosmic  and  moral,  and  of  Biblical  Criticism,  see  the  references  in  the 
author's  Short  History  of  FreethougJit. 


CHAPTER  III.— POPULAR  ACCEPTANCE. 

For  the  history  of  Catholicism  since  the  seventeenth  century  consult 
Mosheim  and  Neander,  also  the  History  of  the  Fall  of  the  Jesuits, 
by  Count  A.  de  Saint-Priest  (Eng.  tr.  1845).  There  is  an  extensive 
literature  on  the  controversy  between  Anglicanism  and  Catholicism  in 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  following  on  the  Tractarian 
movement,  as  to  the  latest  phases  of  which  see  the  recent  Secret 
History  of  the  Oxford  Movement,  by  Walter  Walsh.  For  references 
as  to  recent  developments  in  Protestant  and  other  countries  see  again 
the  author's  Sliart  History  of  Freethought.  The  fortunes  of  Greek 
Christianity  may  be  traced  through  Finlay.  Compare  Villemain, 
Essai  sur  Vetat  des  Great  depuis  la  conquete  mmulmane,  in  his  Etudes 
d'histoire  moderne  (nouv.  ed.  1846).  Concerning  the  state  of  religion 
in  Russia,  see  Wallace's  Russia.  As  to  missions  in  general,  see  the 
able  and  comprehensive  survey,  Foreign  Missions,  by  C.  Cohen  (Free- 
thought  Publishing  Company). 


INDEX. 


Abailard,  245,  250,  285 

Aboubekr,  300 

Abraham,  24,  25,  29,  45 

Absolution,  239 

Abyssinia,  Christianity  in,  205, 201 

Act*,  book  of,  7,  9,  17,  31,  34 

Adalbert,  St.,  272 

Adelhard,  293 

Adonis,  9,  23,  44,  45,  63,  65-6C 

.Eons,  Gnostic,  115 

Aerius,  183 

.Esculapius,  43,  197 

Agtipas,  24-25,  80,  238 

Agni,  09 

Agobard.  233,  243 

Alaric,  176, 177 

Albert,  Archbishop,  313 

Albigensian    crusades,    226,   242, 

252-4,  265 
Alcuin,  211,  292 
Alexander,  134 

-  III.  (Pope),  286 
Alexandria,  50, 115,  146,  192 
Algebra,  294 
Alphonso  of  Castile,  294 
Alva,  319 

Amalrich  of  Bena,  246 
Ambrose,  108,  168,  169,  170,  181, 

192,  193,  196,  240 
Ammon,  27,  189,  228 
Anabaptist  movement,  324-5,  335, 

336 

Ananias  and  Sapphira,  31 
Anastasius,  162 
Andronicus,  305 
Angels,  worship  of,  120 
Angli,  conversion  of,  209 
Anglicanism,  372 
Animal -worship,  92 
Anselm,  245 


Anthropomorphites,  232 
Antinomianism,  81,  102,  116 
Antioch,  church  of,  98,  128,  160 
Antipodes,  doctrine  of,  245 
Anti-Semitism,  394 
Antonines,  the,  162, 197,  204.   See 

Marcus  Aurelius 
Aphrodite,  65,  66 
Apocalypse,  17,  26,  31,  33.  71,  111, 

131 

Apocrypha,  the  Christian,  13,  44 
Apollinaris,  heresy  of,  183-185 
Apollo,  10,  12,  43,  44,  68,  126 
Apollonius  of  Tyana,  35,  86,  194 
Apostles,  myth  of  twelve,  3, 17-21, 
32  ;  the  real,  19,  100 

Jewish,  18,  83 

Creed,  221 


Apostolical  Constitutions,  221-2 

Apostolici,  251 

Arabia,  Christianity   in,  99,  181 

203 

Arabic  science,  293-4 
Arbogastes,  173 
Arcadius,  176 
Archipresbyters,  207 
Architecture,  Christian,  202,  297-S 
Ardeshir,  164 
Aries,  constellation  of,  72 
Aristotle,  study  of,  246,  293,  296 
Arithmetic,  introduction  of ,  293 
Arius    and    Arianism,    149,  151, 

156-7,  166,  167,  109,  176-181, 

185,  217 

Armenia,  conversion  of,  157 
Nestorians  in,   57 ;     heresy 

in,  248-9 

Arminianism,  337 
Arnobius,  104 
Arnold  of  Brescia,  250 


417 


££ 


418 


INDEX. 


Arnold  of  Cliteaux,  253 

Matthew,  372 

Arrius  Antoninus,  135-6 

Art,  effects  of  religion  on,  202, 
203,  296-8 

Ascetic  ideals,  45,  66,  68,  73,  77, 
80,  102,  122,  181,  193,  194,  203, 
387 

Asses,  the  two  mythic,  43 

Astrology,  349 

Astruc,  359 

Astronomical  myths,  26,  44  ;  sci- 
ence, 245 

Athanasius  and  Athanasianism, 
149-151,  155, 156,  161,  166,  180 

Atheism,  336 

Athenagoras,  41 

Athens,  religion  in,  53,  130,  194, 
381 

Attis,  9,  23,  37,  38,  44,  45,  63-65 

Audeeans,  232 

Augsburg,  confession  of,  326,  334 

Augurs,  171 

Augustine,  St.,  117,  170, 173,  182, 
191,  194,  195-6,  233,  234, 
236,  240 

the  lesser,  204,  205,  209,  210 

Augustus,  134,  269 

Aurelian,  128,  140 

Austria,  religion  in,  367,  376 

Averroes  and  Averroism,  246,  294 

Babe-God,  44,  67,  69 
Babylonian  religion,  44,  45 
Bacchus,  25,  38,  67-69,  171.    See 

Dionysos 
Bacon,  Roger,  257 

Francis,  344,  349,  350,  351 

Bangor,  massacre  at,  210 
Banquets,  religious,  22-30 
Baptism,   30,    53,  124,  143,   148, 

240,  248 
Barabbas,  45 
Barbarism,  Christianity  and,  206, 

209 

Bardesanes,  113,  114,  120 
Bartholomew,  Massacre  of  St.,  323 
Basil,  193,  200,  218 
Basilides,  114,  116 
Beghards,  255,  266,  284 
Beguins,  255,  266,  284 
Belgium,  religion  in,  366 


1  Belisarius,  178 

;  Benedict  II.  (Pope),  219 

I  Benedictines,  261 

:  Berengar,  244 

,  Berkeley,  355 

!  Berlin,  321 

1  Bernard,  St.,  285 

Berne,  370  ' 
:  Bethlehem  birth-myth,  11,  97 

Bible,  use  of  in  early  Church,  86, 
91 ;  translations  of,  312 

the  "Rainbow,"  373 

j  Biblical  criticism,  356-361 
!  Bibliolatry,  339 

i  Bishops,  54,  84, 105-7, 110, 144-5, 
147;  and  papacy,  221-2;  and 
feudal  powers,  222 

Black  Death,  the,  280,  288 

Black  Madonnas,  231 

Blood  covenant,  23 

Bodin,  340,  349,  352 

Boethius,  196,  292 

Bogomilians,  240 

Bohemia,  conversion  of,  213 ; 
heresy  in,  309 ;  Protestantism 
in,  327  ;  reversion  of,  328 

Bohemond,  275 

Boleslavs,  the  two,  213 

Bonaventura,  St.,  235 

Bonaventure  des  Periers,  344 

Boniface,  210,  245 

III.  (Pope),  219 

I  Bossuet,  362 

Houfire,  the  name,  249 
!  Boyle,  352 
I  Bradlaugh,  374 
i  Brahmanism,  163 
,  Brazil,  religion  in,  367 

Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit,  255, 

311 
! of  the  Common  Lot,  255,  311 

Britain,  ancient,  Christianity  in, 

99 
:  Bruno,  Giordano,  345,  348,  354 

i St.,  260 

j  Biichner,  356 
Buddha  and  Buddhism,  2,  8,  17, 

163 
Bulgaria,    Turkish    conquest    of, 

215  ;  heresy  in,  249 
i  Bull-symbol,  72 
Butler,  355 


INDEX. 


419 


Byzantium,  186,198-204,261,277,  ! 
292,  296,  297,  298,  299-307,  376  i 

Calendar,  the  ecclesiastical,  171 
Calvin  and  Calvinism,  267,  312, 

323,  334,  336-7 
Cannibalism,  religious,  29 
Canon,  formation  of,  120 
Canons  regular,  207 
Canute.     See  Knut 
Capital  and  labour,  398 
Caputiati,  251 
Cardinals,  powers  of,  223 
Carlstadt,  325 
Carpocrates,  116 
Carthage,  church  of,  143 
Cassiodorus,  291 
Catechumens,  117,  125 
Cathari,  249 
Cathedrals,  207 

Catholicism,  latter-day,  354,  362 
Cave-birth-myth,  44 
Celibacy,  doctrine  of,  77,  109-110, 

193,  206,  224 
Celsus,  13,  104 
Cephas,  20.     See  Peter 
Cerdo,  114 

Ceres,  25,  68.    See  Demeter 
Cetewayo,  216 

Chalcedon,  Council  of,  185,  218 
"  Chapters,"  powers  of,  223,  225 
Charlemagne,  210,  212,  220 
Charles  Martel,  219 

the  Bald,  243 

the  Fat,  221 

V.,315,  320,  322,  326 

Charron,  354 
Chartreuse,  monks  of,  260 
Chateaubrand,  359 
Chaucer,  257 

Chazari,  249 

Chemistry,  rise  of,  293 

Child-eating,  charge  of,  29-30 

Child-God,  the,  44,  69 

China,  ethics  in,  74  ;  Christianity 

in,  363-4 
Chorepiscopi,  206 
Chrestox,  the  name,  36,  39-41 
Christ,  the  name,  2 ;   the  myth, 

32-48,  87,  95 ;  the  doctrine,  95- 

97,  112-116,   120,    121,    126-8, 

149-153,  184-193,   305 


Christian  III.  of  Denmark,  319 

IV.  of  Denmark,  328 

of  Anhalt,  327 

Christians,  the  first,  3-12,  58,  76, 

80,  83,  98-104,  132 

Christmas,  15-16,  44 

Chrysostom,  193-200 

Church,  origin  of  Christian,  54, 
58,  82,  86-97,  98-111;  State 
establishment  of,  138-157 ;  early 
endowments  of,  143-4, 155,  209 ; 
organisation  of,  206-8,  217-229; 
expansion  of,  209-16;  slave- 
holding  by,  271 

Claudian,  195-6 

Claudius,  Bishop,  233,  243 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  94,  103, 
117 

of  Rome,  4-5,  89 

III.  (antipope),  224 

VII.  (Pope),  317 


Clementine*,  the,  33 
Clergy,  early  Christian,  103,  105, 
139, 143-5, 146-57  ;  celibacy  of, 
109-10,  224-26,  257-9;  igno- 
rance of,  257  ;  misconduct  of, 
258  ;  influences  of,  257,  262-4 ; 
modern  Greek,  377-8  ;  Russian, 
382-3 

Clifford,  372 
Clovis,  178 
Coelestius,  182 
Colenso,  360 
Coleridge,  127,  356 
Collins,  Anthony,  358 
Collyridians,  181 
i  Columbus,  347 

;  Communism,  alleged  Christian,  31 
I  Concord,  ideal  of,  77 
Condorcet,  353 

Confession,  sacerdotal,  239-240 
!  Constance,  Council  of,  309 
Constans,  150,  154 
—  II.,  150,  187 

Constantine,  141-150,   159,   269- 
270 

i II.,  150,  187 

VI.,  220 

Copronymus,  249 

the  Paulician,  248 

Constaritius,  153-159 

Chlorus,  138,  141,  142,  151) 


420 


INDEX. 


Constantinople,  ancient  church  of, 

143,  145 ;  Council  of,  185 ;  life 

of,  198,  304 ;  patriarch  of,  148, 

216,  218,  219  ;  fall  of,  295,  306, 

376 
Conversion    of    barbarians,   209- 

216 

Copernicus,  334,  347,  348 
Corinthian*,  Ifyixtle*  to,  5,  17,  22   j 
Corybnntic  mysteries,  68 
Cosmas  Indicopleustes,  197 
Cossacks,  creed  of,  331 
Councils,    church,    82,    110,    128, 

146,  149,  185,  228,  342 
Creeds,  use  of,  124 
Crete,  Moslem   conquest  of,  306  ; 

re-conquest  of,  307 
Crime,  Christianity  and,  387-8 
Crispus,  145 
Cross-symbol,  31-32,   37,  69,  71, 

124,  125 
Crucifix,  the,  32 
Crucifixion,  mystic,  32,  37-38 

mythic,  45 

Cruelty,    Christian    and    Pagan, 

133,    191,    192,    194,  214,  216,  i 

226,   249,   253-4,   261,    263-4,  i 

274-6,  388 

Crusades,  227,  241,  273-280 
Culture-conditions,  Greco-Roman,  i 

50-1 ;  medieval,  257-273,  308-  | 

313 

Cumberland,  354 
Cybele,  63,  64 
Cyprian.  104,  110,  133,  217 
Cyril,  192 

D'Alembert,  353 
Damasus,  Pope,  167,  217 
Dancers,  sects  of,  284,  383 
X>ante,  295 
I.'aniel,  myth  of,  45 
Darwinism,  353,  372 
David,  45 

—  of  Dinant,  246 
Decadence,  ancient,  promoted  by 

Christianity,  103,  145,  146,  150,  ! 

151,  162,  173-4,  176,  177,  181, 

186,  192-204,  218 
Decius,  133 

Decretals,  the  forged,  222,  225 
Deism,  245,  352-3,  357-8 


Delambre,  353 

Demeter,  9,  67,  69,  92 

Deogratius,  192 

Descartes,  350-2,  354 

Devil,  belief  in,  283 

D'Holbach,  353 

Diderot,  35a 

Diocletian,  133,  136-8,  140 

Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  303 

Dionysos,  cult  of,  17,  23,  24,  29, 

38,  43,  44,  45,  53,  67-69,  126, 

130,  171 

Disciples.     Sec  Apostles 
Divination,  166 
Docetists,  152,  248 
Dogma,  formation  of,  185-6,  228 
Dominicans,  235,  287 
Donatists,  152,  177,  247 
Dolcino,  Fra,  251 
Doomsday,  doctrine  of,  30,  46,  85 
Dositheus,  43 
Dostoyevsky,  383 
Drama,  Greek,  50 
Dreyfus  case,  394 
Druids,  29,  228 
Dukhobortoi,  384 
Dynamis,  115 

Education,  pagan  and  Christian, 
196-7,  292-4 ;  in  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, 311 ;  Jesuit  methods  of, 
345-6 ;  modern  Catholic,  367 

Ebionites,  6-12 

Kcclesiaxticux,  book  of,  23 

Eckhart,  266 

Economic  causation,  32,  80-86, 
95,  105,  146,  164,  166-7,  168, 
173,  174,  194,  207-8,  237,  297, 
330,  367,  392,  397 

Egypt,  ancient  cults  of,  151,  18(5, 
189,  228  (*ee  Isis  and  Osiris) ; 
Christianity  in,  99,  151,  171, 
205  ;  Gnosticism  in,  114-116 

El,  24,  25,  45 

Elcesaites,  42,  111-112 

Eleusinian  mysteries,  166,  177 

Elijah  and  El'isha,  45 

Elizabeth  of  England,  317,  342-3 

Elvira,  council  of,  233 

Emerson,  373 

Emperors,  worship  of,  13"> 

J-;nci/<-h>]>«'<ii<i  Hildicd,  361 


INDEX. 


421 


England,  Christianity  in,  209; 
heresy  in  medieval,  254  ;  slave- 
trading  in,  272  ;  Protestantism 
in,  332-3,  346 ;  rationalism  in, 
371-2 

End  of  world,  doctrine  of,  30,  46, 
85 

Knnoia.,  115 

Ephesus,  council  of,  185 

Epictetus,  103,  104,  161,  265 

Epicureanism,  158 

Epiphanius,  233,  234 

Erasmus,  312,  341 

Erigena.     See  John  the  Scot 

Essenes,  60-62 

Eternal  Gospel,  The,  255 

Ethics,  Christian  and  pagan,  47, 
73-78,  79,  101,  109-110,  191- 
204;  385-390 

Eucharist,  3,  22-30,  86,  87,  124, 
125 ;  doctrine  of,  236-9,  243-4, 
248 

Eudo  of  Stello,  250 

Eugenius,  169 

Eusebius,  100,  133,  140,  144 

Eustathius,  303 

Eutyches,  heresy  of,  185,  187 

Exarchs,  148 

Exorcism,  Christian,  85,  101, 125, 
197 

Fanaticism,  64,  77,  135,  137,  154, 

172,  332,  336 
Faraday,  391 
Fausta,  145 
Fenelon,  362 
Ferdinand  I.,  342 
Feudalism,  Christianity  and,  268- 

273 

Feuerboch,  264 
Fichte,  355 
Filioyue  clause,  189 
Finance,     early    Christian,     32 ; 

modern,       392,       398.          See 

Papacy 

Finlay,  cited,  304,  377 
Finns,  conversion  of,  214 
Flagellants,  283-4,  384 
Florence,  religion  at,  245,  267 
Forgery,    Christian,    5,    94,    108, 

222 
Fox  George,  347 


France,  heresy  in,  287  ;  Reforma- 
tion in,  312-313,  320-3;  decline 
of  Protestantism  in,  321-2,  375- 
(i :  rationalism  in,  339,  344, 

359,  366,  375-6 
Francis  I.,  321 

Francis,  St.,  of  Assisi,  254,  264-5 

—  of  Sales,  264 
Franciscans,  215,  255,  309,  345 
Franklin,  373 
Franks,  religion  of  the,  178 
Frnt'n-elU,  255,  309 
Frauds,    early    Christian,  5,   94, 

107-108;  medieval,  221  2 
Frederick  Barbarossa,  251 
-  II.,  295 

of  Saxony,  315,  325 

Elector  Palatine,  328 

Freemasonry,  298 

French  Devolution,  reaction 
against,  353,  365,  375;  effect 
of  in  Greece,  381;  bloodshed 
in,  386 

Friars,  preaching,  227,  254,  261 

"  Friends  of  God,"  266 

Galatians,  Epistle  to  the,  19,  37 

Galerius,  136,  137,  138, 141 

"  Galileans,"  10 

Galileo,  345,  347,  349,  351 

Galli,  64 

Gallus,  153 

Gassendi,  351,  352 

Gaul,    Christianity    in,  99,    178, 

193-4,  206,  209 

Geneva,  religion  in,  313,  323,  335 
Gentile  Christism,  32-46 
Geology,  353 
Gerbert,  273,  293 
Gerhard  of  Cambrai,  253 
Germany,    rationalism     in,    359, 

360,  370 
Gerson,  235-6 
Gibbon,  358 

Gladiatorial  games,  193-4 
Glanvil,  352 
Glostolalia,  78,  106 
Gnosticism,  34,  35,  47,  78,  93-9, 

102,  111-119,  152 
Goat-God,  the,  44 
Goch,  John  of,  310 
Godfrey  of  Bouillon,  275 


422 


INDEX. 


Goethe,  341 

Goliards,  252 

Goths,  religion  of,  176-7 

Gottschalk  the  Wend,  214 

the  monk,  243,  247 

Gospels,  date  of,  4,  12 ;  composi- 
tion of,  86-91,  95-97 

Gratian,  167-8,  270 

the  monk,  225 

Greece,  priesthoods  of  pagan,  82  ; 

life  of  Christian,  376-382,  395-6 

Greek  life  and  culture  (ancient), 

49-56,  99,  102,  124,  203-4  ; 

medieval, 297-307 ;  modern, 

376-382,  395-6 

and  Latin  schism,  302-307 

Gregory  Thaumaturgus,  108 

of  Nazianzun,  157,  160 

the    Great  (Pope),  197,  200, 

202,  204, 205,  218-219,  232, 
237,  240,  241,  282,  292 

II.  (Pope),  219 

IV.  (Pope),  221 

VII.  (Pope),  223-5,  244 

IX.  (Pope),  254,  287 

XI.  (Pope),  227 

Guelphs  and  Ghibelines,  273 
Gustavus  Adolphus,  328 

Vasa,  319 

Hades,  descent  into,  69 ;  idea  of, 

76,  119 
Hadrian,  141 
Halley,  352 

Haroun  Abraschid,  220 
Harpocrates,  70 
Harvey,  350 
Hebrews,  early  beliefs  of,  24,  29, 

37,  45 
Hegel,  355 
Helena,  231 

Hell,  doctrine  of,  76,  119 
Hellenistic  religion,  37 
Henri  IV.,  323 
Henry  III.  (emperor),  223 

—  IV.  (emperor),  224-5 

the  monk,  250 

V.  of  England,  256 

VIII.  of  England,  317 

Heraclius,  187,  192,  209 
Herbert  of  Cherbury,  357 
Hercules  (Herakles),  2,  24,69, 126 


Heresy,  ancient,  111-119,  128-9, 
147,  178,  182-190;  medieval, 
256  ;  rationalistic,  243-7  ;  anti- 
clerical, 247-256 

Hermas,  the  Pattor  of,  42 

Hermes,  39,  44,  46,  69,  96 

Hero-worship,  Greek,  40,  170-1 

Hierapolis,  Goddess  of,  66 

Hincmar,  243 

Hildebrand,  223,  224,  225,  244 

Hobbes,  355,  357 

Holland,  art  in,  297  ;  Protestant- 
ism in,  319,  337,  345 ;  rational- 
ism in,  354,  371 

Holy  Ghost,  doctrine  of,  151 
—  Roman  Empire,  220,  229 
Spirit,  Go*pel  of  the,  255 


Homoousian  dispute,  149-50 
Honorius,  176,  177,  194 
Horos,  44,  45,  69-70,  115 
Huguenots,  the,  313,  322-3,  331-2 
Hume,  355,  368 
Hungary,  conversion  of,  214 
Huss,  309-310 
Huxley,  372 
Hypatia,  192,  200 

Iconoclasts,  the,  233-4,  301,  304 

Icons,  203,  231-4,  382 

Idolatry,  early  Christian  aversion 
to,  102,  131;  later  Christian 
practice  of,  175,  203,  230-234, 
301,  382 

Ignatius,  Epistles  of,  3,  4,  6; 
character  of,  100 

Imitalio  Chrixti,  the,  104,  264 

Immortality,  doctrine  of,  39,  71- 
72,  76,  245 

Imperialism,  Roman,  49,  103, 
104,  135,  157-8,  174,  229 

Impustorx,  The  Three,  295 

Incarnation,  56 

Indi'.r  E.rjuirnatofiufi,  345 

India,  religions  of,  73 ;  Chris- 
tianity in,  363-4 

Indulgences,  doctrine  of,  240-2, 
253  ;  traffic  in,  313-4 

"  Incorruptibilist"  controversy,  190 

Infant-damnation,  doctrine  of,  76 

Infallibility,  Papal,  228,  367 

Ingersoll,  374 

Innocent  III.  (Pope),  242,  253,  277 


INDEX. 


423 


Innocents,  massacre  of,  45 

Inquisition,  the,  285-291,  322, 
338-9 

Inspiration,  47-8,  75-8,  93,  121, 
347,  386 

Ireland,  Christianisation  of,  205, 
209  ;  decivilisation  of,  329,  333, 
365,  394-5 

Irene,  220 

Isaac,  24,  29 

Isidorean  decretals,  the,  222,  225 

Encyclopedia,  291 

Isis,  cult  of,  39,  44,  69,  70,  92-3, 
130,  231 

Italy  under  Christianity,  173,  176, 
178,  221,  246,  287,  295  ;  ration- 
alism in,  339,  344,  349,  365 

Jacobites,  sect  of,  186 
James  V.  of  Scotland,  318 

I.  of  England,  328,  339,  340 

—  II.  of  England,  332-3 

Jansenists,  351 

Japan,  Christianity  in,  363 

Jasion,  68 

Jefferson,  373 

Jehovah,  24 

Jerome,  174,  181,  191,  193,  199 

of  Prague,  310 

Jerusalem,  Jesuist  life  in,  31,  57  ; 

patriarchate  of,  218  ;  capture  of 
by  the  Crusaders,  275-6 
Jesseans,  10 

Jesuits,  in  Poland,  331,  345  ;  suc- 
cess of,  345,  362-3 ;  decline  of, 
364-5 

Jesus,  mythic  personality  of,  12- 
17,   23,  33,   35,  37-38,  42,  j 
43-48,   77,    87-89,    95-97,  ! 
126-9,  149-151,  183-190 

and   Jesuism,    2,    7-11,  19, 

125,  183,  185.     See  Christ,  i 

the  high-priest,  9 

-  Ben  Pandira,  8,  14 

Jews,  variant  beliefs  of,  6  ;  poverty  I 
of,  8 ;  after  fall  of  Temple,  18  ;  I 
mysteries  of,  22-26  ;  and  Chris-  : 
tians,  33-34,  44-45,  56-59  ;  per-  ; 
secutions  of  by  Christians,  193,  | 
209,  274,  289,  337 ;  as  slave-  i 
dealers,  272;  in  Turkey,  379 

Joachim  of  Flora,  255 


John,  gospel  of,  14,  46,  77,  95-97 
—  epistles  of,  21 

the  Baptist,  30,  33,  58 

VIII.  (Pope),  221 

the   Scot,  243-4,  246,  2(54, 

293,  303 
of  Parma,  255 


Joseph,  45  ;  cult  of,  235-6 

Joshua,  7,  9,  15,  22 

Joule,  391 

Jovian,  165 

Jovinian,  181 

Judaism,  7,  9,   18,  37,  56-59,  85, 

164 

Judas,  21,  32 
Judyex,  book  of,  3 
Julian,  153,  157-165 
Saint,  219,  276 


Julius  Ceesar,  134,  158 

Junipers,  sect  of,  383 

Jupiter,  44 

Justin  Martyr,  3,  90,  99,  103,  126 

Justinian,    186,    199,    270,    271; 

code  of,  292 
——II.,  300 
Juvenal,  75,  231 

Kant,  355 

Kelvin,  391 

Kepler,  347,  352 

Khonsu,  189,  229 

"  Kingdom  of  God,"  33,  46,  47 

Knights  Templars,  260,  280, 

Teutonic  order  of,  214 

Knox,  John,  318 
Knut,  212 
Kriobolium,  72 
Krishna,  2,  17,  24 
Kronos,  24 

Labanim,  the,  142 

Lagrange,  353 

Lalande,  353 

Lamb,  sacrament  of,  25-27,    29, 

72,  92, 183 
La  Mettrie,  353 
Laplace,  353 

Languedoc,  heresy  in,  252 
Lares  and  Penates,  52-3 
Las  Casas,  216 
Laski,  John,  3:3(5 
Lauren  tins  Valla,  311 


424 


INDEX. 


Lecky,  372 

Leibnitz,  352 

Leo  I.  (Pope),  192,  219,  238 

X.  (Pope),  313,  317 

the  Isaurian,  233-4,  300-1 

the  Armenian,  249,  301,  302 

Lepers,  263 

Liber  and  Libera,  68,  69 
Licinius,  141-2,  145 
Lithuania,  paganism  of,  215 
Litim*,  the,  171 
Livonia,  Christian ity  in,  214 
Logos,  doctrine  of,  41,  46,  95-97, 

115,  126,  128 
Lollardisin,  255-6,  309 
Lombards,  the,  178,  219 
Lord's  Prayer,  the,  75,  125 
Louis,  son  of  Charlemagne,  220-1, 
303 

St.,  266 

XII.,  322 

-  XIV.,  332 

Lubeck,  paganism  of,  214 

Lucian,  104 

Lucretius,  158 

Luther,  311,  312-315,  324-5,  334, 

337,  339,  349 
Lutheranism,  326-8,330,335-7, 342 

Macarius,  244 

Macedonius,  156 

Macrobius,  161 

Magnentius,  153 

Mai  a,  46 

Manger-basket,  the,  44 

Manicheeism,   68,   91,    119,    123, 

152-3,  168,  177,  178,  179,  180, 

192,  194,  241,  247.     See  Pauli- 

cians 

Mansfeld,  328 
Manuel  Comnenus,  305 
Marcian,  162 
Marcion    and    Marcionism,    119- 

121,  179 
Marcus  Aurelius,   104,  132,   157, 

162,  265 
Mamas,  23 
Marsyas,  44 
Martianus  Capella,  291 
Martin  of  Tours,  170 
Martyrs,  100-101,  135;  spurious, 

171 ;  heretical,  156 


Mary,  myth  and  cult  of,  15,  44, 
181,  184,  231,  234-5 

—  Queen  of  England,  317 

„       „   Scotland,  318 

Regent  „  „        318 

Mass,  the,  238-9 

Massacres,  Christian,  156, 192,210, 
226,  249, 253-4,  274-5,322,  323 
Maternus,  154 
Matthew,  gospel  of,  11 

—  of  Cracow,  309 
Maxentius,  139,  141,  142 
Maximian,  137,  141 
Maximin,  139 
Maximinus,  133 
;  Maximus,  168 
)  Maximilian,  327-8 
,  Mazdeisrn,  46,  61,  71,   114,  152, 

164,  248 

Mediator,  the,  46,  189,  289 
i  Medicine,   ancient    and    modern, 

197,  343,  350 
'  Melanchthon,  334,  349 
Melchizedek,  25 
Menander,  40 
Messiah,  doctrine  of,  2,  9,  10,  11, 

14,  24,  36,  45,  57 
Mexicans,  religion  of  early,  29,  73, 

109  ;  slaughter  of,  216 
Michael  the  Drunkard,  302 

—  the  Stammerer,  303 
I  Middleton,  358 

Midnight  worship,  132,  148 
I  Mill,  J.  S.,  385 
!  Milman,  204 
i  Miracles,  13,  35,  43,  107-8,  232, 

237,  2*1 
!  Miriam,  15 

Missionaries,  Catholic,  362-4 ; 
Protestant,  374-5 

Mithra  and  Mithraism,  9,  23,  24, 
27,  43,  46,  63,  70-73,  81,  96,  99, 
132,  152,  171,  218 

Moawyah,  Caliph,  300 

Mohammedanism,  rise  of,  1, 
186-7,  200-2,  205;  influence 
of,  202,  232,  246,  248;  Chris- 
tian converts  to,  306,  377 

Moleschott,  356 

Molokani,  3H3 

Monarchy,  Christianity  and,  17'.», 
209-214 


INDEX. 


Monasticism,  199-200,  222,  259- 

2GO 

Mongols,  tolerance  of,  215 
Monophysite  heresy,  179,  185,  187, 

1UO,  378,  383 
Monotheism,    pagan,    151,    159 ; 

and  science,  391 
Monothelite  heresy,  187 
Montaigne,  340,  341,  354 
Moiitanus    and    Montanism,    79, 

120-123,  137,  153,  179 
Moors,  persecution  of,    215,  242, 

288,  289 
Morone,  342 
Moses,  2,  9,  45 
Mosheirn,  171 
Mother-Goddesses,  44,  70,  99, 184, 

231 

Miinzer,  325 
Myrrha,  63 
Mystffi,  39,  64 
Mysteries,  Jewish,  22,  23 

-  pagan,  24,  25,  27,  29,  43, 64- 

66,  124,  238 

-  Christian,  22-32,  39,  64,  124 
Mystery-play,  the  primary,  21,  33, 

80,  87,  107 
Myth  in  history  and  religion,  1-2 

Nantes,   Edict  of,  323  ;  revoked, 

332 

Nazara  or  Nazareth,  7,  11 
Nazarites  and    Nazarenes,  6-12, 

57 

Narses,  178,  190 
Netherlands.     See  Holland 
Neo-Platonism,  136 
Nero,  36 
Nestorians,  57,  164,   179,    184-5, 

187,  201 

Nestorius,  183-5 
Netzer,  7,  9 

Newman,  Cardinal,  235,  366 
Newton,  352 
Nicephorus  I.,  249,  301 
Nicaea,  Council  of,  148-9,  185 
Nicholas  I.  (Pope),  222 
II.  (Pope),  223 

-  IV.  (Pope),  277 
Nicodemus,  Gospel  of,  90 
Nicolaus  of  Anthicuria,  245 
of  Cusa,  245 


Nicolitaines,  111 
!  Noetus,  126 
'  Nominalism,  244,  310 
i  .Vtmx,  115 

Novatian  and  Novatians,  110, 
184 

Old    Testament,   analysis  of,  3; 

early  Christian  use  of,  4,  86-91. 

.See  Bible 
Olympius,  177 
Onuphrius,  St.,  171 
;  Origen,  13,  76,  104, 117, 186,  191, 

194,  200,  240 

Orpheus  and  Orphic  cults,  39,  68 
Osiris  and  Osirianisni,  2,  32,  38, 

39,  41,  69-71,  171 
Otho,  St.,  214 
!  Oxford  movement,  367 

|  Paganism,  ethics  of,  16,  73-78 ; 
sacraments  and  mysteries  of, 
22,  25,  32,  63-73  ;  theology  of, 
24,  96;  relation  of  to  Chris- 
tianity, 29,  39,  43-44,  79-81, 
91-92,  99,  104,  130-140,  147, 
162-3,  169-175,  180;  dises- 
tablishment of,  144,  154-5,  169, 
171, 172-4 ;  persecution  of,  153- 
5, 169  ;  persistence  of,  177,  205 

Paley,  356 

Paine,  358,  373 

Pan,  44 

Pantheism,  354 

"Papa,"  64,  218 

Papacy,  growth  of,  110,  171,  216- 
229";  disorders  of,  222-3,  225; 
hostility  to,  221,  226,  227; 
strength  of,  227,  247 ;  revenues 
of,  225,  227,  313 ;  attitude  of 
to  Protestantism,  315 ;  incap- 
able of  economic  reform,  341-2 ; 
present  position  of,  366 

Papias,  100 

"  Parasites,"  53 

Paris,  university  of,  246 

I'ltxayini,  251 

Paschal  controversy,  27-28 

Paschasius  Kadbert,  24^ 

Passion-play.     See  Mystery  play 

Passover,  the,  8,  25,  26 

Pasteur,  391 


420 


INDEX. 


Pastor,  the,  of  Hermas,  42 

Paterini,  252 

Patriarchates,  the  five,  148,  218 

Patripa$$ituut  120-7 

Paul,  2,  3,  32,  34  ;    and  Jesus,  5, 

13,  27,  37-38,  74,  77 
—  of  Samosata,  128,  140,  183 

IV.  (Pope),  322 

Paulicians,  the,  248-250,  280,  301 
Pauline  epistles,  2-0,  17,  19,  22, 

31,  37,  74,  77,  89,  93,  94, 

95,  100,  110,  208 

-  theology,  75,  112 
Paulinus,  195,  199 
Peasants'  War,  325 

Pelagius  and  Pelagianism,  182-3 

Pentateuch,  3  ;  influence  of,  338  ; 
criticism  of,  300 

Persecutions  of  Christians,  30, 
101,  130-140,  201 ;  of  pagans, 
154-5,  109;  of  heretics,  108, 
177,  179-190,  220,  242,  252-4, 
205,  322,  333 ;  by  Protestants, 
330-7 

Persephone,  07 

Pepin,  219 

Persia,  Christianity  in,  98,  104. 
184,  205 

Peru,  conquest  of,  210 

Peter,  myth  of,  20,  33,  34,71,88,217 

-  Waldus,  252 

-  the  Hermit,  274 
Peter,  Gospel  of,  21 
Petrarch,  312 
Petrobrussians,  250 
Pharisees,  7,  50 
Philip  II.,  320 
Philo,  40,  74,  94,  90 
Phocas,  192,  219 
Phoenician  religion,  24,  25,  29 
Photinus,  107 

Photius,  302-3 

/'/(/•om-.s/.s,  115 

Phrygia,  cults  of,  03-04,  08 

Pilate,  33,  88 

Plato  and  Platonism,  40,  116 

Pliny  junior,  132 

Plotinus,  104 

Plutarch,  103,  104 

Poland,  conversion  of,  213  ;  Refor- 

mation  in,  322 ;  recaptured  by 

Rome,  330-1,  330,  345 


Polycarp,  epistles  of,  4  ;  character 
of,  100 

Polygamy,  202 

Polytheism,  Christian,  184,  232-0 

Pomeranians,  conversion  of,  214 

Pontifex  Maximus,  Christian  em- 
perors as,  143,  145,  108 

Poor,  religious  movements  of,  8, 
44, 54, 50 ;  in  Christian  Church, 
85.  See  Poverty 

Pope,  the  name,  218 

Porphyry,  104 

Poseidon,  43 

Positivism,  307 

Poverty,  ancient  and  modern  85 
Christianity  and,  387 


Praetextatus,  107 
Prayers  for  the  dead,  85 
Praxeas,  120,  183 
Predestinarianism,  243,  247,  342 
Presbyterianism,  308-9 
Presbyters,  54,  84, 105 
Priesthoods,    ancient    wealth    of, 

82 

Priesthood,  Christian,  morals  of, 
109-110;   growth   of,   105-111, 
143-8,  210-229 ;  avarice  of,  144, 
100,  211 
Priestley,  358 
Priscillian,  108,  179 
Progress,  Christianity  and,  396-9. 

See  Decadence 
Propaganda,  Catholic  College  of, 

303 

Prophets,  Christian,  93,  100 
Proserpine,  08 
Proselytes,  Jewish,  22,  41 
Protestantism,  effects  of,  on  civili- 
sation, 330,  340,  340  ;  later  posi- 
i      tion  of,  308-370 
Protestants,    name,    320 ;    move- 
ment, 308-333;  sects  of,  335, 
346  ;  missions  of,  374-5 
Provence,  heresy  in,  252-4 
1  Prudentius,  195 
I  Psyche,  myth  of,  39 

"Publicans  and  sinners,"  45,  55 
i  Pulci,  245 
!  Purgatory,  153,  240 
,  Puritanism,  338 

•  Pythagoras  and  Pythagorean  ism, 
31,  61 


INDEX. 


427 


Quadrivium,  291 
Quakers,  347,  389 

Rabelais,  344 

Race,  theory  of,  288,  333 

Ranke,  341 

Rationalism,  rise  and  growth  of, 

243-7,    282,   287,   340-1,    344, 

348-361 

Katramnus,  243-4,  282 
Raymond  of  Toulouse,  252-3 
liealism,  310 
Reformation,  the,  242,  308-333; 

political    results    of,    324-333; 

intellectual  results,  333-347 
Regiomontanus,  295 
Relics,  adoration  of,  108,  241,  283 
Religion,  conditions  of  evolution 

of,  50-56,  396-9 
Remi,  St.,  293 

Renaissance,  the,  246,  281,  287 
Renan, 361 
Resurrection  myth,  43,  64,  65,  67, 

69,  71 

Reuchlin,  312 

Revelation,  book  of,  17,  26,  31,  33 
Rhadagast,  176 
Rhea-Cybele,  92 

Rhetoric,  pagan  and  Christian,  195 
Richelieu,  329,  331-2 
Rimini,  Council  of,  156 
Ritual,  growth  of,  124-5,  170,  238 
Robert  Guiscard,  225 
Rock,  the  Mithraic,  71 
Roman  Empire,  49-56,  85  ;  spread 

of  Christianity  in,  99 
Rome,  pagan  cults  of,  64,  68-69, 

130 ;  pagan  priesthoods  of,  82, 

84;  early  church  of,  101,  110; 

life  of,  under  Christianity,  204, 

217;  sack  of,  316;   aspects  of, 

under  Papacy,  341-2 
Rornuakl,  St.,  283 
Roscellinus,  244 
Royal  Society,  350,  352 
Russia,    conversion    of,  213;  in- 
fluence of  in  Greece,  380,  381 ; 

religion  in,  382-4 

Sabazios,  cult  of,  68 
Sabellius  and  Sabellianisni,  126-7, 
149,  183 


Sacroa,  the,  45 

Sacraments,  pagan,  23-25,  29,  30, 
37,  52,  53,  67,  68,  70 ;  the  four 
Christian,  240 

Sacrifices,  22,  24,  25,  73 

Sadducees,  7 

Sagarelli,  251 

Saint-Simon,  366 

Salvation  Army,  372 

Salvian,  193 

Samaritan  religion,  6,  33 
—  elements  in  Christianity,  6, 
34,  45,  47,  112 

Samothracian  Gods,  39 

Samson,  15,  33 

Saracens.  See  Moors  and  Mo- 
hammedanism 

Sarpi,  362 

Sassanides,  the,  164 

Sa  an,  113 

Saturn,  24 

Saturninus,  113 

Saviour-Gods,  63-73 

Savonarola,  267,  311 

Saxons,  conversion  of,  210-211 

Scandinavia,  conversion  of,  211- 
214  ;  Protestantism  in,  319  ; 
rationalism  in,  370 

Scholarship,  promoted  by  Church 
in  Renaissance,  295 ;  later  re- 
vival of,  311-312 

Science,  Greek,  51,  146,  196-7; 
revival  of,  245,  293-4,  348-354 ; 
and  religion,  391,  393 

Scotland,  Reformation  in,  318, 
343,  368-370 

Scot,  Reginald,  340 

"  Seal  of  God,"  31 

Secular  clergy,  rise  of,  208 

Selenus,  Bishop,  232 

Semele,  67 

Semitic  religion,  15,  22,  37 

Seneca,  74,  269 

Sepulchre,  the  Holy,  380 

Serapis,  41,  130 

Sergius,  249       - 

Sermon  on  the  Mount,  8,  16 

Servetus,  127,  337,  343 
i  Servia,  conversion  of,  213 
i  Seven,  banquet  of,  43 

Sever  us,  133 
I  Shaftesbury,  355 


428 


INDEX. 


Shakespeare,  344 

Shepherd,  the  Good,  39 

Shew-bread,  25 

Sibylline  books,  108 

Sicily,  Moslem  conquest  of,  306 

Silenus,  44 

Simon  De  Montfort,  253-4 

Simon  Magus,  33-34,  43,  112 

Simony,  225,  378 

Sixtus  V.  (Pope),  341 

Slavery,    74,    104,   202,  268-272, 

277,  306 
Slaves,  in  early  cults,  52,  53,  55 ; 

in  Christian  Church,  80,  271 
Slavs,   conversion  of,   213,   215 ; 

invasion  of  Byzantium  by,  303 
Smith,  Adam,  355,  368 
Socinus  and  Socinianism,  336 
Socialism,  367,  398 
Sons,  sacrifices  of,  24,  45 
Sophia,  46,  115 
Sorbonne,  the,  321,  333  ' 
Sorcery,  283,  284 
Spain,  religion  in,  178,  179,  209, 

215,   234;  inquisition   in,  288- 

291 ;  ruin  of,  289 ;  rationalism 

in,  366 
Spencer,  356 
Spires,  Diets  of,  325-6 
Spirit,  the  Holy,  44 
Spinoza,  354 
Stable-birth  myth,  44 
Stephen,  the  boy  crusader,  277 
Stercoranism,  282 
Stilicho,  176,  177 
Stoicism,  74-75,  159,  162,  265 
Strauss,  360 
Suetonius,  36 
Suidas,  303 
Sulpicius  Severus,  36 
Sun-myth,  15,  25,  26,  70 
Sun-day,  71,  148 
Superstition,  Christian,  101,  131, 

2S1-5,  806 

Supper,  Holy.     See  Eucharist 
Switzerland,  Reformation  in,  316, 

333,  334-5,  368-370 
Sylvanus,  248 

Sylvester  II.  (Pope),  273,  293 
Symbols,  sacrificial,  29-30 
Synods,  82 
Syria,  cults  of,  66  ;  Gnostics  in,  113 


Tabitha  and  Talitha,  35 

Tacitus,  36 

Tammuz,  65 

Tanquelin,  250 

Tatian,  113,  114 

Tan,  the  Hebrew,  31 

Tauler,  266 

Taurobolium',  72 

Teachinn  of  the  Twelve  Apostle*, 

18 

I  Temple,  destruction  of,  6 
i  Teresa,  St.,  235 
I  Tertullian,  77,  99,  102,  122,  132, 

135 

I  Tetzel,  313-14 
I  Theodora,  190 
I  Theodoric,  178,  217 
'  Theodorus  of  Mopsuestia,  183 
:  Theodosius  the  Great,  166,  167-9. 

170,  172,  176,  179,  192,  231 
1  Theodotus,  127 
;  Theophilus  of  Antioch,  40 

Thirty  Years  War,  327-330     , 
i  Thomas  Aquinas,  235,  246 

—  a  Kempis,  265 
!  Thoth,  46,  96 
!  Thrace,  heresy  in,  249 

Tiberias,  134 

Tiridutes,  157 

Tithes,  211,  240,  252 

Toledo,  Council  of,  189 
j  Tolstoy,  383 

Torquemada,  289 

Torture,  use  of,  133,  263 

TmtUtore*,  138 

Trajan,  102 

Transubstantiation,  236-9 

Transylvania,  Prince  of,  328 

Trent,  Council  of,  342 

Triads,  Egyptian,  151 

Trinity,  doctrine  of,  126-128, 149- 
151,  167,  234,  244,  356 

Trivium,  291 

Truce  of  God,  241 

Turks,  the,  274,  377-380 

Twelve  apostles,  myth  of,  3,  17- 
21,  32,  33 

Typhon,  21,  69 

Ulphilas,  176 

Unitarinnism,  '24.',,  :>,:>,•;.  :;.V_>.  :;.-,s, 
373,  389 


INDEX 


United   States,   religion   in,   332, 

372-4,  393 

Universities,  rise  of,  311 
Urania,  66 
Urban  II.  (Pope),  274 
Usury,  papal,  226 
Utopia,  299 

Valens,  166,  167,  191,  231 
Valentinian,  165-6,  173,  191,  192 

-  II.,  168-9,  173 
Valentinus,  115 
Valerian,  133 
Vandals,  the,  177,  203 
Vaudois,  the,  251,  322 
Vedas,  150 
Vegetation,  symbol  of,  9  ;  Gods  of, 

63 

Venice,  379 

Verona,  Council  of,  286 
Vesalius,  343 
Vespasian,  135 

Victory,  Goddess  of,  142,  168,  172 
Vico,  362 
Vienne  and  Lyons,  churches  of, 

133 

Vigilantius,  181 
Virgil,  295 

Virgilius,  the  priest,  245 
Virgin-mother  myth,  44,  63,  62, 

181 

Visigoths,  religion  of,  178 
Vladimir,  213 
Voltaire,  353,  358,  397 
Vulgate,  the,  12 


Wafer,  the  consecrated,  29,  238-9 
Waldenses,  251 
Wallenstein,  329 
War,  Christianity  and,  386-90 
Washington,  373 
Wazon  of  Liege,  253 
Wends,  conversion  of,  213-4 
Wesel,  John  of,  310,  313 
Wessel,  John,  310,  311,  313 
Wiclif,  254,  312 
Widow's  son,  myth  of,  45 
Widows  in  early  Church,  85 
Wier,  John,  339-40 
William  of  Occam,  287 
Witchcraft  mania,  284,  338-340 
Women  and  Christianity,  84-85, 

101,  116,  262-3,  367 
Worms,  Diet  of,  315 

Xavier,  363 

York,  early  Christians  at,  91) 

Zacharias,  Pope,  220 

Zecliariah,  book  of,  9 

Zeller,  370 

Zendavesta,  71 

Zeno,  185 

Zenobia,  128 

Zeus,  44,  67,  126,  234 

Zoroaster,  2 

Zulus,  conquest  of,  216 

Zurich,  333,  370 

Zwingli,  316,  333,  334 


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